


Lost String

by miyaicheese



Category: SB19 (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25107991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miyaicheese/pseuds/miyaicheese
Summary: Sejun embarks on the long, lonely and sometimes fruitful journey of loving someone who doesn't love him back.
Relationships: Stelljun - Relationship, Stellvester "Stell" Ajero/John Paulo Nase | Sejun
Comments: 82
Kudos: 61





	1. Lost String Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again (ノдヽ) I'm back with another work.  
> I'm in a hurry bcos I might be inactive when new normal and work to actual offices resume. So please bear with me?
> 
> This will be my first take on full angst. Writing exercise or something but.. you've been warned 🤐
> 
> xxxxx
> 
> * Get Married as Job will be put on hold because I hastily made a same-sex marriage theme. Will need more time for this.
> 
> * Without Us is temporarily pending bcos it got messed up with the current issue with their agency. I'm anxious but will let it be fix first I guess.

When Sejun fell in love with Stell, he thought that perhaps there was a community out there, a community for hearts that were given and weren’t returned, for dark hours of sadness during the nights and lucid moments of hopelessness during the days. 

Sejun thought he should probably be the chairman of that community because his was a case so despondent that there really wasn’t any point in trying to save it. There were a lot of comings and goings in that community. Some left because they found new hearts to give out. Others left because they simply gave up.

Sejun was a steadfast member, as constant as earth itself, impeccably following all the guidelines and rising higher and higher in position each year until he thought that surely there could be a limit to the amount of unrequited love that a person could possibly give. 

“I have become the chairman,” he told Justin once. Justin knew of Sejun's community. 

“I don’t know what to say.” His voice was worried, concerned.  
“Can you resign?” 

“Maybe,” said Sejun, smiling crookedly. “With about three years’ notice.” It was a very bitter membership.

“Where does love go?” Sejun asked Justin.

They were on the beach side by side, looking up at the stars and Sejun was content, though he knew that Justin was wishing that a beautiful Maria Clara was beside him instead. 

“What do you mean?” Justin said blankly.

“When it goes out seeking for a home and isn’t welcome,” said Sejun. “Where does it go then? If it doesn’t come back.” 

Justin wrapped his arms behind Sejun's head and resisted the urge to look back at the hotel, where he knew that at this very moment, Stell was probably romancing a couple of girls in the bar. He and Josh never failed to draw female attention, though Josh tended to score more than Stell simply because he wanted to. 

“It’s sad when love doesn’t have a home,” Sejun said in a low, slightly rough pitch of his voice. “Just like how everything that is homeless and destitute is sad.” 

“I don’t think love is homeless,” said Justin earnestly. “I think it just chases after its target until it catches up, and then it becomes welcome.” 

Sejun mulled over it. “But sometimes it can never catch up, no matter how hard it may run or how stealthily it follows.” 

“Then maybe,” said Justin because he was the sort of person who didn’t give up on his friends. “If that’s the case, it should turn around and take a walk back to its original place.” 

Sejun laughed. There were many types of laughter in the world, all of which were tinged with an emotion – some of joy, some of derision, some of cynicism, and some that were faintly self-mocking. 

Justin thought that all the emotions a single laugh could carry were infested in Sejun's laugh – definitely far more emotions, more stories, than Sejun ever let on in words. 

“I think mine doesn’t have a reverse gear,” he said. “Or if it does, I haven’t learned how to use it yet.”  
“Maybe someday.” 

Sejun threw his arm over his forehead, watching the faraway star blink down at him. “Yes,” he agreed, listening as the night sky told him just how great the universe was, how mightily awesome, and how much his insignificant one-sided love paled in comparison. 

“Someday.” 

And then Justin suddenly felt the inexplicable urge to contradict and tell Sejun that there couldn’t possibly be a someday, because a Sejun who did not love Stellvester Ajero was not Sejun.

\--------

“I love you.” Three words that could so easily change the entire course of one’s life. It had been raining that day. For the rest of his life, Sejun would associate the sound of rain with the sadness of a love going out to seek a home and finding it unwelcome. It was an association that came along with such deeply felt emotions that they couldn’t overflow in the form of tears.

“I…” Stell looked genuinely bewildered. Sejun didn’t blame him. It was hard after all, to believe that someone who barely spoke to you was in love with you. It was something that Sejun himself could not yet understand. Perhaps his heart did but it imparted none of its secrets to his brain. 

“I…” Stell still didn’t seem able to form a coherent sentence. Sejun saw that Stell was struggling, really struggling.

And because he loved him, Sejun took Stell out of the struggle. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot,” he said. “I don’t need an answer either. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.” 

Stell looked at Sejun, at the five foot eight of Sejun with his wavy hair and anxious eyes, and felt the relief of a man who wasn’t pressured into giving an affirmative answer. “Uh… Sejun, you know I don’t – well, go in for this sort of thing.” He added quickly, “Though I’m grateful for your feelings, of course. For the sake of the group, maybe it’s best if you stopped thinking about it.” 

“Yup.” Sejun nodded.

“I don’t like you,” Stell finished awkwardly. “I don’t think I ever will.” 

Sejun bit his lip, the first time during the entire encounter that he actually seemed at a loss. Stell looked away and gave Sejun time to wipe the pain off his face. When he looked back again, Sejun met his eyes directly and smiled.

Before that day, Sejun's smiles had always been like a gift, bursting out on his serious face and practically forcing everyone around him to reciprocate with smiles of their own. But before long he would become known for his fake smile. “It’s okay.”

“Thanks. For letting it be.”

“I won’t mention it to you again.”

“It’s fine.”

“Nothing changes, right? If we don’t talk about it.”

“Yup.” Sejun smiled again, that transparent meaningless smile that somehow could not find its way to his eyes, and left the room quietly. True to his word, he never mentioned it to Stell again, neither in words nor actions. But somehow, the silence entered Stell's heart and nestled there.


	2. Lost String Chapter 2

When Stell and Josh turned up on their dorm for the group activities it was a mess of five boys trying to live and work with each other. Sejun liked to lie down somewhere within Stell's vicinity – near enough to hear his voice and far enough not to bother him – and listen to him chattering away animatedly with Josh and Ken.

It was a side of Stell that he was not given the right to enjoy firsthand. But at least as he remarked to Justin, he still managed to get it through the ‘back channels’. 

Stell took no more notice of him than he did before the confession, which in other words, meant that he ignored Sejun completely except during the times when he looked for someone to do fanservice or to pick on. “Your eye makeup is ugly,” he would tell Sejun one day, or “You didn’t seriously go out and buy that belt? Tell me that your mother or someone else with bad taste bought it.” the next. 

Sejun did not like Stell's subtle bullying anymore but decided not to rise to it. Stell tend to get emotional whenever someone tried to argue with him, and Sejun wasn’t yet ready to face the days and possibly weeks of horrible awkwardness once the heat of the argument was over. So he turned his head away and pretended not to hear. Instead, he listened to Stell joking around with Josh or Ken because that was the real Stell. That was the Stell that he had somehow – unknowingly and reluctantly – fallen in love with. 

Perhaps it was because he’d gotten so much into the habit of listening out for Stell’s voice that he once overheard part of a conversation between Ken and Josh as he lay unseen on a couch a few feet away, trying to woo some sleep before the manager called them out for yet another meeting. 

“Stell, why do you keep criticizing Sejun?” Ken asked, opening a can of softdrinks. Sejun heard the loud ‘ssss’ of the gas escaping. 

“I don’t criticize him more than I do Justin or Josh,” Stell defended. 

“No. You really pick on Sejun. Nearly every time you see him you have something to comment about. It’s almost like you despise him.” 

“I don’t know what else to say to him. It’s either that or I don’t talk to him at all.” Stell said in a meek voice. “Think of it as group bonding,”

“Any form of interaction is better than no interaction?" Josh asked.

"And besides, if I’m too nice to him he might misunderstand and…”

For a terrible moment, Sejun thought that every drop of his blood had halted abruptly in its downward course and turned around to rush madly into his head. Then he realized that Stell had stopped talking. 

“Misunderstand what?” Ken asked, clearly baffled.

“Misunderstand that I might think of him as my friend.” 

Sejun shivered a little and started to breathe again. 

Ken made an annoyed sound at the back of his throat. “I know that you don’t like him. But isn’t it better that we all get along until the management decide what to do with us?”

“I know what I’m doing,” said Stell. “We’ll each deal with it in our own way, okay?” 

Sejun stopped listening then, partly because he was too relieved that Stell had not blabbed about his confession to someone else, and partly because he didn’t want to listen anymore. He didn’t want to know what Stell truly thought of him. For now, Stell was choosing to hide his rejection behind poison and criticism - and Sejun, though he did wish that Stell had chosen a somewhat different route, did not blame him for it. 

But he didn’t want to know what Stell really felt about him because unnecessary pain never did anyone any good. This was one instance where ignorance was better than knowledge. Sejun continued to watch as Stell chummed around with Josh and Ken, throwing his arm around their shoulders, whispering into Josh's ear, poking Ken in the ribs. 

He couldn’t say that he was jealous of Josh or Ken exactly, there wasn’t much point in being jealous. No matter how green-eyed he might be, Stell wasn’t going to love Josh or Ken any less nor like him any more. And it didn’t make him sad, since he liked seeing Stell being comfortable and friendly even if it wasn’t with him. But sometimes he did wish…did envy…when Stell's body signals changed from 'I’m so glad you’re in the same group as me so that we can fool around together' to 'I don’t know what to say to you whenever he came near Sejun'. 

Sejun was fine with staying away from Stell, if it meant not causing Stell any trouble. And so he carefully kept distance from Stell, neither offering his phone number nor asking for Stell’s, not speaking to him unless absolutely unavoidable, making sure not to betray himself with a look or word. If Stell noticed his efforts, he never showed it and Sejun did not ask. On a whole, it was easier than he’d expected but it did cause him many ‘white’ nights.

Once, and only once did Sejun come close to betraying himself. He remembered that he had been walking past a perfume shop - it took him a while to get the sickly sweet fragrances out of his head when a chat message from Stell came. 

Stell: Come over to my place at 8pm tomorrow? Got something to tell you. 

Sejun blinked unbelievingly. He reread the message three times then put the phone away to deal with the burst of excitement that rushed through him. Stell had actually invited him over. Aloof and caustic as Stell might seem, was inviting him over. He felt so giddy with anticipation that he completely forgot to give Justin a call.

He instead spending the rest of the day sifting through his cabinet and wondering how he should behave when he was at Stell’s place. What would Stell be like if it was just the two of them? What was Stell’s apartment like? Sejun gave himself over to dreaming about sitting on Stell’s couch, watching him at work in the kitchen, propping his leg up on the coffee table, channel surfing on the TV. Like what Josh and Ken would do. It was crazy, thinking that he could even behave like Josh and Ken but for once, Sejun let common sense go and allowed himself to dream. 

The next morning, just after Sejun awoke from a deep blissful sleep, another message arrived from Stell. 

Stell: Be sure to get Justin along. 

Sejun stared at his phone, completely confused. If Stell had something to say to him, why ask Justin along? Justin said as much when Sejun called him. 

“What does Stell want to tell you?” Justin asked.

“I don’t know. He didn’t specify.”

“I don’t think I should go. If Stell wants to tell you something, it should be personal, right?” 

Sejun sighed. “Maybe you should just come since he says so. There’s probably a reason why he wants you there.” 

“Okay, I’ll come but I’ll make myself invisible when he starts telling you stuff? How is that?” 

“Okay, that’s settled.” 

For the rest of the day, Sejun threw his entire concentration into his compositions. He kept a tenacious grip on his mind, not allowing it to wander for a single moment. There was no point in thinking or anticipating. Things were just going to play out the way they were going to play out.

By the time Justin arrived at his place to pick him up, it was a very pale Sejun who got into the car and offered his friend a smile.

“Sejun, you look so tired,” Justin exclaimed. “Didn’t you sleep well last night?” 

“I did, perfectly,” said Sejun honestly. “Maybe I’m just tired mentally. Let’s go get this over with.” 

Justin shot him a slightly puzzled, concerned look. But Sejun wasn’t in the mood to explain his sudden reluctance. The moment they reached Stell's apartment, he knew he had been right. 

The door was thrown open and a mess of boots, high heels, sandals, and shoes cluttered up the doorway. Justin paused, staring at them in bewilderment but Sejun merely kicked off his shoes and walked in.

Music blared out from Stell’s expensive stereo set. Everywhere he looked he saw girls and guys whom he didn’t recognize, though he did catch a glimpse of JP drinking away with a girl at a window and Josh playing cards with a couple of guys at the dining table. A few girls looked up and smiled suggestively when they saw him, but otherwise nobody else acknowledged him. 

“What’s going on?” Justin breathed behind him, huge bold question marks floating above his head. 

“Sejun! Justin!” Ken magically materialized a few feet away from them. “What are you doing here?” 

“St-Stell invited us,” Justin stammered. 

The split second of confusion that came over Ken's face was enough to tell Sejun that this was not an uncommon gathering, and one in which he and Justin were definitely not considered among the list of attendees.

But Ken recovered quickly and gave them a thumbs up. “Good to see you here,” he said, and he actually sounded sincere… though nothing in the world at this moment held any truth for Sejun. 

“Stell’s around somewhere,” said Ken. “Do you guys want anything to drink?” 

Justin hesitated and Sejun answered first. “No thanks,” he said politely. “We’ll be going soon.” 

“But you just arrived?” Ken said, more confused than ever. 

Just then Stell came up, decked out impeccably in a dark blue shirt and black jeans. He looked every inch the idol. “Hi Sejun!” he said. 

Sejun would have replied but he was staring at the girl on Stell's arm. Not so much that she was pretty and dolled up and exactly the type of girl that Stell liked, but that she was holding on to Stell as though she actually had a right to be there. 

Stell, eyes fixed on Sejun’s face, gestured towards her. “Meet my girlfriend, Mary,” he said. “Mary these are my groupmates, Sejun and Justin.” 

Mary immediately smiled and held out her hand. Sejun's hand, when she grasped it was cold. “Sejun, you might not be wearing enough!” she said, laughing. “Your hand is like ice!” 

Sejun's eyes flickered from her to Stell and back again, dazed, unable to comprehend why Stell would want to hurt him like that. 

“Hang around and have a drink,” said Stell. His expression was unreadable. Sejun looked past him to the big plasma TV behind and said nothing.

Justin reached out and grabbed his arm. “It’s okay!” he said. “Sejun and I have somewhere else to go, don’t we?” He nudged Sejun hard and Sejun nodded mechanically. 

Stell watched as Justin pulled Sejun out of the apartment, dodging past a few couples that strayed, laughing and half-drunk into their path. Then Stell extricated himself gently from Mary’s hold, went to his room, and shut the door. 

Sejun didn’t speak until they were three streets away from Stell’s apartment. Then he said, very softly, “Was that what he wanted to tell me?” 

“Sejun…” Justin hunched over the wheel and stared intently through the windscreen, as though there were answers out there if only he looked hard enough. “I don’t know.” 

“Do you think you can get some beer from the convenience store?” Sejun asked. 

Justin glanced at him, startled. “But…you’re not drinking.” 

“I think I’ll like to try. We can drink at your place, right?” 

“Yes, but…” 

“Please?” Sejun said tonelessly. “I want to know if it’s true that getting drunk will make you forget everything temporarily.” 

And so, even though Justin knew that it was probably not the wisest thing to do, he bought two packs of beer and took the two of them to his place where Sejun lost no time in opening one can and downing it as quickly as possible. He breathed hard and opened his eyes. Justin was crouched on the floor opposite, staring at him anxiously. 

Sejun breathed in again deeply and smiled. “It’s bitter,” he said. 

“Sejun if you’re really upset, you should cry,” Justin said. 

Sejun shook his head and reached out for another can. “It’s too deep Jah. I can’t cry.” 

Justin hesitated then took a can and opened it. “In that case, I’ll drink with you.” 

“Thank you,” said Sejun.

They knocked cans together and drank. Sejun finished his second can almost as quickly as the first. Justin took one swallow and paused. “Stell didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“No, that wasn’t his intention,” said Sejun. “He just wanted to tell me very clearly to give up on him.” 

“But…” 

“He miscalculated.” Sejun placed the empty can on one corner of the table. “I gave up on him a long time ago. So doing that – was of no purpose.” 

“Have you really?” Justin leaned forward and looked into Sejun's eyes. “Have you really given up on him?” 

Sejun returned Justin's gaze. “Most of the time... You see... I love him. Loving someone comes from hope, doesn’t it?”  
Sejun took another can. “There’s no such thing as loving someone hopelessly.”

He threw his head back and took a long swallow, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes looked misty but he smiled again, mirthlessly. “It’s really bitter.” 

“Don’t drink it then. Let’s watch some TV and forget tonight.” 

“I’m sorry Jah.” Sejun finished his can and put it next to the two other empty cans. “I’m so sorry for putting you through all this.” 

“I’m your friend. I’m meant to be put through all this.” 

“Thank you.” Sejun leaned on the sofa and tasted the beer on his tongue. “Let’s try to forget, then.” 

\-----

Ken opened the door quietly and peeked in with Josh close behind him. Stell was sitting on the edge of his bed, motionless, with his head in his hands. 

“Stell?” Ken ventured. “Mary is asking for you.” 

Stell glanced up and both Ken and Josh saw that his eyes were red with tears. Hurriedly, they entered and shut the door behind them. 

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked, his voice taut with shock. 

Ken crossed over to Stell and placed a thumb on his cheek, rubbing away a tearstain. “Did someone do anything to you? Why are you crying?” 

“Tell me,” said Stell. “Can you burn in hell for hurting someone deliberately?” 

Josh and Ken exchanged puzzled looks. “I don’t know,” said Ken, “but you should never hurt someone deliberately.” 

“Then let me burn.” Stell closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his hands. “Let me burn.”

\---------

Sejun walked into the training room far too early two days later and found Stell already there, busily cutting up pieces of coloured paper with a photo album lying open beside him. Sejun considered turning and leaving the room till some other member came. 

But Stell looked up and gave him a half-smile that seemed almost apologetic. “It’s hard to cut this stuff nicely,” he said with a hint of confidentiality in his tone that drew Sejun closer. “Who would have thought that compiling a scrapbook would be so damn tedious?” 

“What are you compiling a scrapbook for?” Sejun asked more for the conversation’s sake than for anything else, watching as Stell scribbled a sentence on a strip of coloured paper and stuck it into the album. 

“I’m making a family scrapbook for my mother’s birthday. It’s coming up soon,” Stell said, his voice filled with a tenderness that made Sejun smile, quietly and genuinely.

He knew – he had always known – that Stell had it in him. It told him, forgive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told myself to write in short form but this is difficult 😖
> 
> How was it.. 2/??


	3. Lost String Chapter 3

What does it mean to love a person? 

When Sejun asked Justin, Justin laid his hands romantically on his chest and said that loving a person meant wanting, first and foremost their happiness. “Because love is very unselfish, right. Even if you might be sad inside, the most important thing is for that person to be happy. When you can put someone else’s happiness way and above your own, then you truly love that person.”

"Was love really that noble? To be sure, you wanted the person you loved to be happy. But wasn’t selfishness prevalent in human nature itself?"

Justin had been too befuddled to reply; his philosophy did not go as far as that. 

When Sejun asked Ken, Ken pursed his lips for the longest time before saying, “Well, to love someone is to get starry-eyed whenever you’re with that person, isn’t it? Your blood rushes to your head and your heart beats fast and when you hold hands, your palms are sweaty.” 

“I would call that infatuation,” said Sejun. 

“Why?” Ken asked.

“Wouldn’t it be troublesome if you love a person and get married to her, and for the next fifty years of your life you’re starry-eyed and sweaty-palmed whenever you’re near her?” 

Ken hesitated and turned his attention to the fashion magazine he was holding. Within minutes he was complaining about how a designer's financial clout had bought a decline on one trend, and Sejun did not press the issue. 

When Sejun asked Josh, Josh blinked a couple of times. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just being happy whenever you’re near that person, I guess?”

“Marriage can be relentless,” Sejun pointed out.

“Some couples aren’t always happy being near each other.” 

“You can’t be happy all the time,” said Josh sensibly, “But just a general happiness, right?” 

Sejun wondered if that was really true, because time spent being near Stell tasted more of pain than of happiness, even if it was general.

Touring was something that they all had to put up with. Sejun liked holding concerts but most of the time he didn’t like the touring part of it. He didn't like getting up at inhuman hours, travelling miles and miles in a van or plane beside grumpily sleepy members, spending weeks cooped up with them in such inexorable proximity, having to be entertaining and idol-like from morning till night even when he was so tired that it felt like gravity was dragging at his muscles. 

Now he had all the more reason to dislike touring. It meant being within slightly less than ten feet away from Stell for at least twelve hours a day, which meant having to keep a tight restraint on his emotions for longer periods of time than he was yet accustomed to. It was very stressful. 

Sejun tried to deal with it by sticking as closely as he could to Justin. And he suspected that Stell aided him a little by sticking as closely as he could to Josh and Ken but it didn’t always work out. 

“Snnx.” That was the sound of Justin's snore. Even in sleep, Justin was considerate by not snoring too loudly. 

“SNOOORKKfoo.” That was Josh's snore; as always, harmlessly self-centered by being abnormally noisy. 

Sejun was still trying to figure out how he had ended up sitting beside Stell on the two-hour bus ride to the next tour spot. Behind him, Justin and Josh were happily unconscious to his troubles. 

Before him, Ken is playing games on his handphones in fierce and silent concentration. In front of Ken, their manager and staffs were chattering; he could hear their low voices going on and on in hushed, excited tones.

As far as he knew, everyone had grabbed their seats with apparent spontaneity and somehow he had taken the window seat and fiddled around with his headphones and turned around to see Stell sitting beside him. Sejun wondered if he should make some excuse about needing privacy and shift to another seat, but Stell prevented that by leaning his head close to Sejun's shoulder and murmuring, “We'll…talk.” 

“Talk?” 

“Yeah. We’re going to be sitting like that for two hours, right?” 

“If you want I could move…” 

“And have the rest of the members wondering what’s up with us that we can’t even bear to sit beside each other? Sometimes you’re not too brilliant, even though you are a top student in school.” 

“SNOOORKKfoo.” Sejun thought that Justin's snores really came at very indiscreet times. “What do you want me to talk about?” 

“Anything.” 

Sejun thought for a moment. “Well, I’ll tell you a story about a no-name cat then.” 

Stell raised an eyebrow skeptically. “No name? How can you call it's attention?” 

“All right, it’s about a cat who introduces himself as ‘Meeyaoweou’.” 

Stell adjusted his posture to an attitude of attention. “Go ahead.” 

“One day it happened that…” and so Sejun told Stell the story of a cat they call Meeyaoweou. 

Stell listened and thought he understood, and it took a load from Sejun's heart that had been lying heavily and nauseatingly inside him for a long time while Justin and Josh snored behind them, “Snnx.”

Meeyaoweou was a cat that could, for unknown reasons, think and rationalize like a human being. It was perhaps a gift that had been bestowed upon him for being exceptionally useless. It is because Meeyaoweou was nothing to boast about in the departments that cats were supposed to be good at. 

He’d never caught a rat nor chased a bird. He could not behave sneakily to save his life… though he did have a talent for observing people unnoticed. Perhaps you cannot blame Meeyaoweou for being so deficient. A cat cannot have both mental and physical strengths that are on par with each other. 

“Your protagonist doesn’t sound very appealing.” Stell commented.

“He’s not an appealing cat.” 

“Well, continue.” 

The thing about Meeyaoweou that was probably even more unappealing than his lack of physical prowess was that he did not want to catch rats. As you know, it is sometimes more shameful not to want to do something than actual inability to do it. 

Meeyaoweou had absolutely no interest in catching rats, because he thought it was a senseless thing to do. Why bother dirtying his paws? He preferred lying around at home on nice comfortable rugs, feeding off the cook in the kitchen who supplied him with scraps whenever she was in a good mood, and sleeping or grooming himself as the world went by. 

Unfortunately, even though Meeyaoweou thought that was a perfectly sensible way to spend his life, his owner did not think so. Meeyaoweou loved his owner very much. His owner had picked him up when he was just a stray kitten with nothing to mark him – one in a hundred thousand stray kittens. 

But his owner had seen something special in Meeyaoweou and so picked him up and brought him home. He gave him some milk and a warm blanket, and from then on Meeyaoweou swore loyalty to him. His owner had never shown anything but affection towards Meeyaoweou. The bond between the two of them was very strong. 

“I thought that dogs were the loyal animals, not cats.” Stell confusedly butted in.

“Meeyaoweou is not just any usual cat.” 

“That’s beginning to be your excuse for all his shortcomings and inconsistencies.” 

“Does it matter even if it is?”

“SNOOORKKfoo.” 

“Not really. Continue.”

“Okay...”

One day, it happened that Meeyaoweou's owner decided that Meeyaoweou had sponged off him long enough. He told Meeyaoweou, “For years I’ve been rearing you and you’ve never given me anything back. I see that my other friends’ cats keep themselves fit and trouble-free by catching rats around the house and chasing away birds. Why don’t you ever do that for me? I don’t want to keep such a lazy, unhealthy cat.” 

Those words cut Meeyaoweou to the soul. For days after that, Meeyaoweou could not get over them. He felt that his owner had betrayed him by suddenly turning on him after so many years of never seeming to mind what he did. 

But even then, Meeyaoweou loved his owner and so he decided to do what his owner had implied that he should do. He went out and tried chasing a few birds and laboured at catching a couple of rats but as expected, he was out of shape and got breathless very easily. Obviously, he never caught anything. 

His owner did not seem impressed with his efforts and every day Meeyaoweou chased one more bird, ran a couple more metres. Before long, he’d grown stronger and more active. He still didn’t like chasing birds but now he would run around just for the fun of it. He began eating and sleeping better. 

One day, he jumped onto his owner’s lap and his owner stroked him, and Meeyaoweou realized something that he should have realized from the start - to save himself from the unhappiness that he had initially felt at his owner’s words. His owner had hurt him because he wanted Meeyaoweou to be fit and healthy. His owner had wanted to do Meeyaoweou a good deed. It made Meeyaoweou a little sad that he hadn’t been able to understand his owner immediately.

But ultimately it didn’t matter because it had worked and through his love for his owner, he had become a stronger, more useful cat. He’d also learned that love comes hand in hand with forgiveness. 

There was a long pause, then Stell said, “Meeyaoweou forgave his owner completely?” 

“Yes.” Sejun replied.

“No trace of hatred or resentment?” 

“Not at all. Because Meeyaoweou understood his owner’s intent.” 

“He’s a good cat.” 

“I’m glad you finally think so.” 

“Sejun.” 

“Yes.” 

“I don’t think he was an exceptionally useless cat. He had talents. Like being able to understand people.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah. That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think?” 

“It is…” 

Sejun looked down at Stell's hands lying open and relaxed on his lap, and thought he loved Stell so much in that instant, he had to force himself to look out of the window in case Stell saw the expression on his face. 

Stell said meditatively, “I like Meeyaoweou. Won’t mind hearing more about him in the future.” 

“When he tells me his stories, I’ll remember to retell them to you.” 

“Okay.” 

Stell wondered how Sejun had seen and understood how he felt about introducing Mary to him. He was quite sure that he had not shown Sejun any trace of how upset he’d been over deliberately hurting him. 

But Sejun had understood and alleviated Stell's self-hatred by his story. Something told Stell distantly that it was Sejun's love that had given him such discernment. Love that had been generous enough to forgive Stell without question and take pains to assuage his own sense of guilt. 

Stell moved his hand until it touched Sejun's – the faintest of pressures, meant to say Thank you. He knew that Sejun would not misunderstand; Sejun’s love went deeper than he had previously thought. Stell felt secure.

\------

They did not find themselves alone together again for the next month and Sejun did not begrudge it. He knew that he had memories to sustain him: Stell’s few words of indirect praise, the slight touch of Stell’s hand against his, the moments of breathing slowly and unhurriedly beside Stell as the bus rushed on through the countryside. 

When he happened to catch Stell’s eye now, randomly, Stell would smile. Not as widely as he smiled with Josh, nor as happily as he smiled with Ken, but a smile nonetheless – a small curve of the lips, a very tiny gift.

Something had changed about their relationship, though Sejun couldn’t quite pinpoint it. It was neither here nor there. A more exacting person who felt less might have persevered in putting a name to it, or at the very least finding some way to define it. But Sejun didn’t see the need. 

Sometimes, there was beauty in ambiguity. In this way, they continued touring.

Sejun laid back and stared up at the night sky, wondering why he couldn’t see any stars. If there were as many of them as astronomers claimed, wasn’t it reasonable to expect at least a few to show through, even if clouds and city lights tried their best to blot out as many stars as possible? 

He gazed at an unwavering spot of light in the sky, a little too bright and steady to be a star and wanted to laugh at the romance of the modern day night-time; satellites instead of stars, car fumes instead of fragrant flowers, chlorinated andncordoned off swimming pool areas instead of the beach.

Though that last one was probably because he was stuck in a hotel in a central city, and had nothing to do with romanticism. 

“What are you doing?” a voice behind him startled him into sitting up. He swung his head around to see Stell bending under the barricade and walking towards him. 

“Oh,” said Sejun, relieved. “I thought you were a security guard.” 

“Security would love to find you here. They’d have a reason then to throw us out,” Stell said, standing over him with arms crossed over his chest. 

Sejun was about to reply when another thought occurred to him. “How did you find me?” 

Stell sat down beside him. “I just thought of the most sentimental place in the hotel that one could be.” 

Sejun gestured towards the barricade fluttering slightly in the breeze. “Not very sentimental.”

“You get my point.”

“Why did you come out looking for me anyway?” 

Stell took a moment to answer. “Justin woke up and found you gone so he came flapping into Ken’s and my room getting all worked up about the possibility of you being kidnapped. Guess he wasn’t too worried after all because he fell asleep the minute he sat down on my bed. Thought I’d just come out and take a walk then.” 

“Mmm.” Sejun didn’t want to think too much; he’d learned that thinking too much only gave him more pain when he realised that the truth was really very simple. Instead, he flopped back down onto the tiled floor, resting his head on his arms. 

He sensed Stell lowering beside him and then they were looking up at the sky together, and Sejun thought that stars really weren’t needed. 

“It’s a humid night,” Stell commented. “Feels like you could swim in it.” 

“Humidity takes the joy out of life.” 

Stell laughed, short and sharp. “Sejun, you’re so old.” 

“The word is mature.” 

“No.” Stell shook his head. “Just plain, flat out, boring old.” 

Sejun didn’t reply and Stell became speechless as well, gazing up at the bland, cloud-covered sky. The breeze sent long ripples across the surface of the dimly lit swimming pool. And sometime during the stretch of night Stell fell asleep. 

Sejun listened to Stell's breathing, soft and regular beside him and realized that, harsh and pitiless though unrequited love was, it also brought about amazing joys; small, nondescript delights – a starless sky, a ripple across water, a breath, unsaid words with warmth. 

He knew that as long as he continued loving Stell, he could be happy and content just being near him. Somehow, it made life clearer than before.


	4. Lost String Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for trying this multichapter! This will be my first try on angst, I hope you'll enjoy reading 👀 Come to my comments, would love to know your thoughts on this!
> 
> Would like to promote my other multichapter: Faded Memories and Coffee Prince ‐ they're completed already~

Sejun would have been content to have gone on like that for as long as life allowed him to. He didn’t ask for anything that he knew he wouldn’t be able to get. And so he was happy just being able to work with Stell and see him occasionally, note how maturity and success was bringing that sparkle into Stell’s eyes and polish in his public or performer personality. 

Stell was definitely leaping from strength to strength – he would be a big star one day. Sometimes, Sejun wanted to laugh a little at the thought of the red-haired, scary looking boy he’d first met becoming a big star.

But that was how life worked in such strange ways; and one year of training later, it struck and took most fellow aspirants from them. 

It was disgraceful, their manager told them. Some fell out due to rigid evaluation while the others caused a ruckus in public, getting arrested and ending up in the police station… disgraceful. Most trainees will be punished but all of them have to bear some responsibility too. And their manager warned them not to behave like that ever. Stell almost gave up in the weeks following his former cover groupmate’s suspension. 

Sejun watched silently as he battled loneliness, frustration, despair. He spent the day talking to their former trainees for hours on the phone.

It is just like confiding in Ken when they were previously together for group activities, because he started distancing himself from the other members just when he’d started to open up. 

Justin tried to get to him by fussing over him and making sure that everything was just to his liking, but Stell glared at him and told him to stop being such a cowering member. Justin kept away after that. 

Ken and Josh both took turns trying to win Stell over with their antics and cute smiles and eager offers of help, but they too were repulsed so coldly that it took a lot of courage for Justin to talk to Stell again. 

Ken lost his smile for a day or so. Josh tried to play a prank on Stell and emerged out of it feeling that he had been banished into hibernation. Sejun wrapped up in keeping Justin away whenever he got excessive and cheering up Ken and Josh. And Sejun did not notice the frequent perceptive looks that Stell cast on him. 

If anyone had told Sejun that he did not notice the attention that Stell paid him, he would have laughed because he certainly watched Stell as much as he could. Whenever Stell laid his head on Ken’s shoulder and looked particularly tired, Sejun would coax the others out of the room to give Stell some space. 

When Stell came into their practice room looking pale and unhappy, Sejun made sure that there were bottles of water and snacks placed around the room and – if he could manage it – Stell’s preferred kind of music on the playlist. 

When Stell smiled – a rarity now – Sejun would relax and encourage Justin and Ken in their silliness, willing that smile to grow wider, more frequent, more heartfelt. It was a sort of watching that required all the care that he could give. 

Sejun was tireless, if it meant simply giving Stell a few more moments of undisturbed peace for the day. And so it went on for months, Sejun watching Stell, trying to anticipate what he would want and how best to give it to him so subtly that he would not notice. And Stell watching Sejun, with sombre, observant looks that Sejun never saw. 

It went on until their supposed to be seven or nine member group fell into the agency’s wrath and the group learned of their upcoming suspension. Sejun realized that even this meagre bit of satisfaction he got out of caring for Stell was to be taken away from him.

\-------

It was raining. Sejun leaned his head against the cold car window and watched the rain splatter against the exterior of the car. Plat, went one drop and then another, the sharp sounds going straight into his head. 

“Sejun, are you okay?” Justin asked. 

“Yeah,” Sejun said. 

“I don’t know what to think,” said Josh from the backseat. “I feel like…my world has dropped out of its orbit.” 

“Even Ken looked shocked,” Justin said. 

Sejun wondered what Stell’s face had been like when the manager had called him in - from his one month vacation due to his dental correction - to inform him of the impending group suspension. Had there been anyone by his side to put an arm around his shoulders during the first shock? Then again, maybe it had not been a bad shock; probably more of a relieved one. 

Maybe Stell was actually glad to be rid of a group that he had not wanted in the first place, and the even more irritatingly unwelcome love of a member whom he had no special feelings for. 

Sejun was always unpredictable. Sejun thought that he wanted to see Stell. Really, really, really wanted to see Stell just once, before their meetings dwindled to nods of acknowledgement during general encounters or chance run-ins at the agency. 

He wanted to reach out and touch Stell’s hand, to try and convey to him – somehow – not to forget him too quickly, nor the short moments they’d spent together sometime during the span of their lives in a quiet sleepy bus and under a starless sky. 

But then he knew what held such cherished significance for him did not mean anything to Stell. It did not disturb Stell whether he saw Sejun once a week or once a year. He can have his own career, his own group, his own friends. It was something that Sejun acknowledged and accepted. Still, he thought if he could only see Stell once… just once… maybe the parting wouldn’t be so hard. 

He traced the outline of a raindrop with his finger and remembered how Stell had said, “I don’t like you. I don’t think I ever will.” Sejun tried to forget those words whenever he could, but he wasn’t always successful. And when they did come back to him – as they usually did on a rainy day. They were a poignant reminder that he had no right to ask to see Stell, nor any right to try and be close to him. 

“Do you think love can continue chasing after someone whom it doesn’t see?” he asked Justin suddenly. 

Justin blinked, then made the connection. “Of course,” he said, “but maybe it slows down after a while. And that’s a good thing, right?” 

“Slows down till it stops one day?” Sejun clarified. 

“I’ve heard of that happening before.” 

“I wonder when mine will stop,” Sejun murmured. He felt so alone.

\-------

“Sejun.” 

“Yeah.” 

Justin's voice filled the room. “What did you do today?” 

“Ate. Slept. Watched some series. You?” 

“I watched some of our old performances.” Justin sounded sorrowful. 

“You know that’s not a very wise thing to do.” 

“I know, but today I just came across them and I couldn’t help but watch them… it’s not like I purposely wanted to watch them.” 

Sejun sighed and closed the book he was holding. “So that’s why you can’t sleep at 2am?” 

“Did I wake you?” 

“No, I was reading.” Sejun didn’t add that he had seen Stell's pre-debut videos that day, promoting a cover group and korean culture. Chancing across Stell in the media always caused him a few hours of insomnia. 

“Oh,” said Justin, “I ran into Ken today, In the training hall.” 

“How is he doing?” 

“He’s finishing up errands… he’s doing well. He asked about you, too. It’s strange, Sejun – lately I haven’t been thinking much about the group. But when I saw Ken I felt that I missed us so much.” 

Sejun grinned a little. “That’s typical of you. You always think you miss someone when you see them again after a long time, even if you haven’t been thinking about them at all.” 

“Isn’t that a good thing? That way, I continue liking people, right?” 

“If you want to see it that way, sure.” 

Justin appeared to adjust his phone as several muffled noises came over the speakers. Then there was a short silence before he said, “Uhm, Sejun.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Do you still think of him?” 

“Yes.” 

“Do you miss him?” 

“Every day.” 

“We’ll come back as SB19 one day,” Justin said. “And then you’ll be able to work with him again, and be with him.” 

Sejun pillowed his cheek on his hand and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. Right now I’m living one day at a time. I don’t dare to hope for too much.” 

“I’m sure he thinks about us, too. And misses us.” 

“I wonder,” said Sejun. “I really do.” He was thinking of the huge smile he’d seen on Stell’s face that day on his social media account update. Stell seemed happy. It ought to be enough for him that Stell was happy… and it was, but he couldn’t help the little knot of sadness in his stomach. 

“Justin…” 

“Mmm?” 

“I really want to see him.” Sejun felt a stinging behind his eyelids andnfor once, allowed a couple of tears to leak out. “I want to see him so much.” 

“It’s okay, Sejun,” said Justin soothingly. “Tomorrow - I mean later.. we’ll go out driving, hang out and look at interesting stuff and you’ll feel better, okay?” 

“Right.” There was another pause. Sejun brushed away his tears and opened his eyes. The moment of self-pity was over. “That’s how it’s going to be then,” he said, his voice steady. 

“Yes,” Justin said, “we’ll get through this together, right?” 

“Yup.” Despite the conversation, Sejun didn’t sleep very well that night.

\---------

Ken was doing magnificently well with game show guestings assigned by their agency. Josh was doing well as with his part time – though Josh did complain over the phone to Sejun how silly he felt whenever he went back to modelling and such; and Stell seemed very happy hanging out with their cover group Se-on. 

Sejun still went through plenty of nights tossing and turning in bed, restless. But on a whole he felt that he had accepted the separation from Stell. It was something that he could not control. Stell did not seem to make any effort in contacting him. And so Sejun did not contact him either.

He met Justin nearly every day, perhaps for companionship but mostly because they sensed their need for each other – a need that was as transparent as glass. They talked, laughed, went on trips together, composed little melodies and verses, practice some dance routines, hung out, and all the while they avoided the topic of SB19. 

But although Sejun acted nonchalant about it, Justin saw the longing in Sejun's eyes whenever he came across anything that reminded them of SB19. Justin knew that both of them were waiting, as they had always been, as they always would be.

\---------

Summer passed into rainy days, which turned into holiday -ber months season, which brought SB19 back. Sejun, standing before his mirror staring at himself before he left for the agency night concert. 

He thought that something very deep inside him had changed, though he did not know what that change was. He did not know that change would eventually allow him to fall out of love with Stellvester Ajero.


	5. Lost String Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy reading

Justin unlocked the passenger door so that Sejun could slide in beside him. Justin’s hands were trembling and when he tried to fasten his seat belt, he let go of it prematurely and it zapped back up. Justin yelped. 

Sejun grinned. “Do that again.” 

“Don’t tease, Sejun!” Justin protested, reaching for the seat belt again. “I feel terrified!” 

“Of what?” 

“I’m not sure exactly,” Justin confessed. “Maybe of seeing Ken, Josh and Stell again? Or performing in front of people. I think I’ve lost my touch.” 

“If you ever had it in the first place,” Sejun said, and accepted the slap on the arm that Justin immediately gave. 

They lapsed into silence then, Sejun channel surfing on the car radio to find some music that would soothe their anxiety and Justin staring out of the windscreen, one hand on the wheel.

Sejun trying to remember how long it had been since Justin had mentioned Stell’s name. He had, of course, heard Stell’s name many times over the past months. 

Ken mentioned it in their group chat innocently as he went around the department stores - saying that Stell would like this and Stell would like that, and wouldn’t Stell look absolutely fantastic in this hat. 

Josh randomly mentioned how he’d run into Stell, possibly along with their circle of friends and they had gone out for a quick lunch together. During which Stell had said that it would be good if all the SB19 members could meet up sometime. “But he’s very busy,” Josh had said. “So I think even if we all get together and fix a date, he won’t be able to make it.” 

Sejun had listened to them all abstractly and detachedly. Somehow, it had not made Stell very real to him. But now, Stell’s name coming out of Justin’s mouth was suddenly so thick with all the memories and connotations that were attached to that one syllable that Sejun found himself lost again, caught up in a blinding flash of reality that he was in a car going towards the events place and Stell would be there. 

Stell's voice, he thought, entrancing with a little sharp at the edges, not quite deep enough to be considered very manly, squeezed but controllable when he sang. Stell’s smile, wide and childish and stretchy, breaking through the seriousness of his off-idol mood. Stell himself, prickly and bossy and undemonstrative backstage but will always put his friends first, always genuine. 

Sejun remembered everything. When he fell in love with Stell, he had been inaugurated into the community of unrequited hearts. He thought his heart must still be with Stell, keeping close to him, because he’d lost sight of it years ago and hadn’t yet gotten it back.

When they flashed their passes at the security guards and made their way backstage of their ShowBT night, past the organized teeming crowd of staffs, fellow trainees and technicians, Sejun gave himself a chance. 

「 If Stell smiled at him before the show started, it meant that his heart was still with Stell. 」

It was silly, totally illogical, and Sejun surprised himself a little by going along with it. But then again, he thought if he had been logical all along, he would never have fallen in love with Stell in the first place.

“JAH! SEJUN!” they heard Ken shouting above the indistinct buzz of voices. Sejun wasn’t quite sure what to expect until he saw that Ken was speeding towards him with arms wide open and the next moment his face was in Ken’s shoulder and Ken was hugging him tight, so tight, that Sejun had to struggle to breathe.

“Ken…!” Sejun smiled back to him.

“I’m so happy to see you!!” Ken exclaimed almost tearfully, releasing Sejun and latching onto Justin.

“Ken, it’s good to see you!” Justin wailed as he threw his arms around Ken and hugged him back. 

“We’re going to be together again,” Ken said, grabbing hold of their arms. “Didn’t we say that we’d come back? And we have!”

“We have,” Justin echoed, and looked as though he was going to cry. 

Sejun staved off premature tears by telling Ken, “I watched your tv guestings and it was really interesting. Your location cover is a good song too!” 

Ken grinned widely and Sejun was sure he had never seen Ken so completely unguardedly happy before. “I’m happy that you watched it! But…” he dropped his voice and leaned closer, “you know, it was very lonely. I wished all the time that you guys were with me.” 

Before Sejun had time to absorb that and feel warm about it, Josh came running up and he was once again ambushed in a flurry of hugs and exclamations. And Josh rubbing his eyes into Sejun’s shirt because he’d started crying the moment he saw them. 

“Really, Josh... can’t you get a tissue?” Sejun asked, unsuccessfully trying to steer Josh onto Justin.

“I’m so… happy to… see you all!” Josh said between sniffles. 

Sejun had no way of arguing with that, and so they rolled towards their dressing room in one big, touchy bunch. Everyone talking at once and laughing at once and crying at once, and all eyes were turned on them with indulgent smiles.

Nothing had changed, Sejun thought, and yet everything had changed. Ken had left off his reticence. Justin was no longer a kid. Josh was brimming with confidence. And himself… 

Suddenly, as though he had been sleeping for the past months and had finally been jolted awake, he saw Stell. Sejun felt as though the gravity had just doubled beneath his feet. Stell was standing in the middle of the dressing room, feet apart, hands in pockets, evidently waiting for them. 

It was so natural, so stunning. For the first time that evening, Sejun thought he might cry. In the brief moment before Ken and Justin leapt onto Stell and shielded them from each other, Stell’s eyes met Sejun’s and his lips parted into a smile. 

A smile so small that if you weren’t looking hard enough, you could miss it. But Sejun saw it, and read what it said to him. 

「 Continue loving me, Sejun. 」

And because he had given himself that chance; because he had gone through months of being without Stell and still remembered everything about Stell; because Stell was looking at him even before glancing at anyone else; and because Stell was smiling at him and for him - the reply was simple and made without conscious thinking. 

「 I will continue loving you, Stell. 」

It was very late and half the party crowd had dispersed. Somewhere in the club, Ken and Justin were still getting drunk and competing with each other about who should first approach the beautiful dancer up on the podium.

Neither would, of course. Justin was too shy and Ken did not like to chat girls up when he was among other workmates whom he wasn’t very familiar with. But it didn’t stop them from having an excuse to knock down as many drinks as possible. 

Sejun looked across the table of discarded shot glasses and scattered snacks to where Josh and one of their choreographer staff were arm wrestling. They had been at it for nearly half an hour already, ever since Josh decided that he should stop getting more drunk because his mother would certainly have words to say about his breath when he got home. Their staff hadn’t won once. 

Stell was sitting beside him, so spent with the exertions of the night that he seemed melted into the seat. Sejun didn’t try talking to him. It was enough that Stell had opted to stay beside him instead of going with the rest of their fellow staffs when they had taken off an hour earlier to another club for a more personalized celebration. 

“Sejun,” said Josh, and he looked up to see both Josh and their friend standing. “We’re stepping out for some fresh air. Wanna come?” 

Sejun looked at them, then at Stell, who was looking back at him. “Uh, it’s okay,” he said. “You guys go ahead.” 

Josh ambled off without giving it a second thought. Stell shifted in his seat and reached out for his Long Island iced tea, silently drawing it to his lips and taking a long sip. Sejun felt all his movements acutely. 

“How have you been?” Stell said. His voice was low and dull, and Sejun wondered if he wanted to talk, because a club was really not a place where much talking could be done.

“I’ve been surviving,” he replied. 

“Has that been hard?” 

“Sometimes.” 

Stell struggled to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, it’s too noisy.” 

Sejun stared at him. “Where to?” 

“Anywhere. Some late night cafe?” 

“Which cafe would still be open late night on a holiday?” 

Stell thought for a moment, his eyebrows puckering with the effort. “There’s a cafe within walking distance from here. Keith and I went there last year.” 

“Do you really want to…” Sejun began, then got up in a hurry to steady Stell when he swayed on his feet. “I think you should go home. You look like you’ve had enough.” 

Stell smiled and Sejun removed his hand. “You’re always looking out for me, aren’t you, Sejun?” 

“You should go home.” 

“Not yet.” Stell reached out and pulled him a couple of steps towards the door. “I have a story to tell you.” 

That was so unexpected that Sejun found himself holding on his jacket and falling into step behind Stell, following him out of the club and down the street to some pleasant, normal-looking shop with a sign Coffee Prince within walking distance. 

Stell didn’t say anything as they strode down the darkened streets, and Sejun didn’t say anything as he kept up behind him. It was happiness, made all the more glorious after the months of drought.

Stell’s phone jangled as he stood waiting for his cream caramel americano. He slide his phone open and held it to his ear. “Hey!! Happy Holidays. How’s the night?” 

Sejun’s espresso arrived. 

“Can’t talk now, I’m with someone,” Stell said, motioning to Sejun to grab his drink and find a table. “We’ll meet up sometime next week? Good! Remember your vegetarian diet and try not to stuff yourself too much or you’ll get fatter than you are already.” 

Sejun moved off to find a table then, and when Stell came to join him, he was grinning. “That was Mary,” he said. Sejun was suddenly accosted with memories of music blaring in an apartment and a pretty, doe-eyed girl hanging onto Stell’s arm and just like that, he found himself shivering.  
Always, always, it was too much. 

Stell’s next words dispelled the chill. “We broke up, you know. Four months ago. She found some other guy to hang out with, so we became friends.” 

“You’ve been together a long time…” 

“Yeah.” Stell settled down opposite him. “Long enough for the romance to fade away.” 

Sejun watched Stell sip at his americano and gaze at a point beyond his head. He couldn’t quite identify the sensation he felt at the news of the break up. He thought he should be happier. But then again, of course, Stell was only issuing information that everyone around him knew. Nothing more. 

Sejun recalled how easy it was to read insinuations into everything, and how he had found out the hard way that most of the time, they didn’t exist. So he leaned back and tasted his espresso as well and let the matter go. 

It seemed a long time before Stell spoke again. “During the suspension, that cat of yours paid me a visit.” 

Sejun didn’t bother to hide his astonishment. “What?” 

Stell grinned, slightly cautious but satisfied anyway at Sejun’s reaction.

“Yeah. He said you weren’t paying him enough attention, so he decided to tell me his latest story instead.” 

“What was that?” 

Much later, Sejun would wonder if things would have turned out differently if only, on that night, Stell had not told him that story.

Meeyaoweou was a smart cat most of the time. He always knew when people were tired and depressed. The stupid thing about Meeyaoweou was that he also tended to think that they wouldn’t want him around during those times. Meeyaoweou had a huge inferiority complex. 

Sejun objected, “Meeyaoweou does not!” 

“I said it before, Meeyaoweou told me the story. I’m only regurgitating what he said.” 

“Meeyaoweou wouldn’t say that about himself. Yours is a bootleg cat.” 

“Keep quiet and continue listening?” 

“Right, fine. Whatever cooks your ramen.” 

The matter became more serious when it involved his owner. There came a time when some pretty bad things happened to his owner and he became seriously depressed. Meeyaoweou knew it, and he did all sorts of things to help his owner out. But he also mistakenly thought that he wasn’t welcome since he caused his owner a lot of trouble. 

One day his owner told him, “Why are you so afraid to come near me these days?” 

Meeyaoweou replied, “Because I don’t know if you want me around.” 

The owner said, “I know how you’ve been caring for me. I appreciate it. But you know, you don’t have to slink around like that because your presence doesn’t trouble me at all.”

Meeyaoweou asked, “Do you mean that?” 

“You’re my cat. My feelings towards you have not changed,” the owner answered. 

Here Stell stopped and looked directly at Sejun. Sejun’s face told him nothing. 

Meeyaoweou felt happier then, but a few days later something happened and he was forced to leave the house. I won’t go into details about what happened because it’s not really important. Just the fact that he left the house. 

He was very sad as he said goodbye to his owner because he wasn’t sure if they would ever meet again. 

On his part, if the owner… “Found a new cat.” You’re wrong. The owner thought about Meeyaoweou a lot, and wished that he would come back.” 

“Why didn’t the owner find Meeyaoweou and bring him back, then?” Sejun asked animatedly.

“The owner was too busy and kept putting it off, and one thing after another came up. So eventually he found himself not doing it at all.” 

Sejun released his grip on his cup. “That means that the owner didn’t care very much for Meeyaoweou after all.” 

Stell took his time in answering. “Maybe. Maybe the owner cared for Meeyaoweou in a different way. Like always watching out for news of him, and occasionally asking friends whether they knew what Meeyaoweou was up to. That was what the owner did.” 

“Second hand.” 

“I guess you can say that.” 

“First hand takes more effort, huh?

Because Stell was honest, he said, “Yes.”

There was a pause, heavily loaded with thoughts. 

“Did Meeyaoweou eventually return to the owner?” Sejun asked. 

“When he came to visit me, he said he was on his way back,” Stell replied. “I just assume that the owner was very happy to have him back.” 

“Your storytelling is abysmal,” Sejun said. 

“I don’t read a lot,” said Stell, “so I don’t know much about storytelling. Besides, like I said, I’m just repeating what Meeyaoweou told me. So if you have a bone to pick, go find him.” 

“I will. It appears that he has lowered his standards.” 

Another silence fell between them. 

Sejun stared at the dark brown liquid in his cup and tried to take some comfort in the story he had just heard.

But all he could think about was that Stell had been too busy to pick up the phone once and message him during the suspension. There was so much that was contradictory, so many conflicting emotions. But that one thing stood out above the rest in painful clarity.

“Sejun…” 

“Yeah?” 

Stell looked very hard out of the window. “I missed you.” 

It was so soft as to be inaudible but Sejun heard it. He turned his head and looked out of the window as well and they both watched a group of late night revellers walking down the streets and laughing. Their laughter carried in the cold, crisp air and it said - Like that, just like that, the new season has come. 

Stell had missed him but had been too busy to do anything about it. Without fully understanding why, Sejun felt so sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How was it (Дﾟ;/)/ asdfghjkl


	6. Lost String Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy reading (⌒‐⌒)♡

Sejun did not like the word ‘busy’. To him it carried half a dozen unspoken meanings, half a dozen connotations, and none of them were positive. 

Justin didn’t quite agree with him on that point. “Well, if someone’s busy... he’s busy, right?” he said plaintively. “You can’t control being busy.” 

“No, actually.. I think one can,” said Sejun. “If only you want to.” 

“But that’s not fair,” Justin argued. “What if you are training twelve hours a day for a comeback? Isn’t it okay to say that you’re busy then?” 

“For that one day, maybe,” Sejun said, “but for a week? Who won't have a day off for a week?” 

“Still…"

"I think telling somebody that you’re busy just implies that you do have the time - only that time is used for other things more important than that somebody.” 

Justin didn’t look convinced and Sejun didn’t blame him. After all, it wasn’t easy to make people see how cutting the word ‘busy’ was. What Sejun didn’t tell Justin was that he had not hated the word ‘busy’ before, either. He had thought it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable, right until the moment Stell used it as an excuse for his complete lack of communication over several months. 

SB19 was back and as expected, that meant a multitude of nonstop activities. Endless trainings, lessons and thoughts about how good it was to be back together, how they’d weathered the hiatus and become stronger as individuals, how they could now collate all their strengths and form an even better group, how they had waited and expected and all the politically correct things that they had been told to say. 

It was all very nice, Sejun thought, very nice-sounding words, very nice stories about how they’d cried in happiness at being together again, very nice in general. But would anyone want to know the truth, the amount of frustration and anger and desperation and selfishness and even relief that all of them had felt at some point in time during the hiatus? 

Would anyone want to know that his other reason for being glad at the reunion was that now he could be with Stell again? Or that Ken had actually been just that little bit glad when they were suspended because the amount of expectation the agency staked on them was getting too much for him. Or that one of the reasons for Justin’s unhappiness was that he’d been afraid of being sidelined now that he didn’t have a group supporting him. Or that Josh had been quietly venomous towards others for causing them so much trouble. A hundred little feelings and thoughts that weren’t really so nice? 

But then, he thought, as he watched the smiles on his members’ faces while they sat in a van rushing towards the location for their next mall show - they could bury all those hundred little feelings and thoughts, because real as those emotions were, the nicety was real too, and the friendship was real. 

The joy was real. Sejun knew that that was as good as it could get. He turned his head and saw Stell grinning at him, the wide grin that was somehow so alien to Stell’s serious face and yet so Stell. 

“What are you dreaming about, Sejun?” Justin distracted him from his bubble.

“Have I been dreaming?” 

“If Josh repeating his question three times without once getting a response from you is an indication of dreaming, then yes you’re one of the worst dreamers I know.” 

Sejun blinked. “Did you ask me anything?” he said to Josh, who was peering over his shoulder. 

Josh looked pained. “Sejun! Everyone in the van heard me!” 

“Well I’m sorry but it would be rectified if you would just repeat it again…” 

“I was saying,” said Josh with a deeply self-sacrificial air, “that my friend wants to know that place you were recommending the day before, where’s that store again?” 

“Oh, it’s near Sejun. Just opened recently.” Ken perked up. “Stell likes Filipino food!” 

“So do you,” Stell said. 

Sejun looked at Stell. Stell looked back at him. 

“I’ll give you the name,” Sejun said. 

Josh pretended to shiver. “Brr. Sejun is cold.” 

“How is that cold?” Sejun asked. 

“For the benefit of our group dynamics, Sejun should bring Stell to the family restaurant, right?” Josh appealed to the rest of the van, and Ken clapped his hands in agreement. 

“Uhm, what about Justin instead?” Sejun suggested.

Justin hesitated. “Uh…” 

“Don’t put me in a risky position, Justin,” Sejun said, careful to keep his tone light. “Stell might end up eating me instead of the specialties there.” 

“Sejun's so morbid…” Josh began. 

“But home style cooking would taste better…” Ken said. 

“Why would I want to do that?” Stell asked, cutting through both Josh and Ken. There was dead silence because Stell hadn’t sounded playful at all. 

Sejun broke the silence by laughing, even though he hated himself for doing so. “Well, that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” he said. 

“I said, why would I want to do that?” Stell repeated. 

“Stell,” said Ken butted in, “just really wants to go to that restaurant right?” 

“So he can,” said Sejun, “and so can everybody else. I’ll give you the name and chat the map address as your guide and you can…” 

“Is there a reason why Sejun doesn’t want to go with Stell?” Josh teased, and for one violent moment Sejun wanted to wrap his hands around his neck and squeeze. 

“Since Sejun finds it so hard to invite someone along,” said Stell, “I’ll do it. Sejun, will you take me to that restaurant?” 

Sejun paused, trying to read the signals to ascertain what exactly Stell wanted him to do. But Stell only leaned back and folded his arms, evidently waiting for the answer. Sejun thought there existed the possibility of it all simply being some sort of grotesque joke or challenge.

But then he decided that for once, he would take things at face value. “If you promise not to bully me,” he said. 

“I promise,” Stell said. 

“Well then… let’s go.” 

“Yeah, let me know when.” 

And just like that, Josh and Ken cheered, and it was settled.

Later on that day, after they’d fooled around a little back at their studio and Sejun felt unusually cheerful, Stell received a phone call that made him scowl in worry. “Oh, shit,” he said into the phone. 

“Are you okay?” Josh immediately turned concerned, enquiring eyes on Stell. And Sejun tried to conceal the fact that he and Justin were both listening hard. 

“Get out of bed,” Stell said. “You can’t stay alone there! Have you eaten? I’ll come over tonight, okay? Yeah I’ll buy dinner. Get up and take a shower and I’ll be there at eight.” 

He listened for a while, then said, “Don’t be idiotic. You know I’m never too busy.” 

Sejun turned away then, but he couldn’t escape hearing Stell flip his phone case close and tell Josh, “That was Mary. Broke up with his boyfriend a couple of days ago and she seems pretty destructive right now. I’m worried about her. She isn’t even eating.” 

Josh made a sympathetic sound. “You’re going to her tonight? But you’ll be so tired…” 

“It’s okay. I have to make sure that idiot at least gives her stomach something to digest. And of course, keep the kitchen knives out of her reach.” 

“Stell?!” 

“No, I’m not joking. I’m really worried. She sounded bad.” 

Sejun walked over to Justin and Ken and became intensely interested in the paper decors they were folding, even though in reality he saw nothing.

That day Stell rushed off the moment they were done, he immediately went back to the condo where he gathered his personal clothes and hurriedly hailed a taxi to Mary’s place. 

The next day he spent hours on the phone to Mary, seemingly oblivious of the members and staff milling around him. The day after that, he came in with red-rimmed eyes, looking more dead than alive. 

“Stell, what on earth were you up to last night?” Ken asked when Stell dragged his way through the door and slumped down onto the couch without so much as a greeting. 

Sejun had to scramble away to avoid getting pushed to one side. 

“I’ve seen corpses that look more alive than you.” Ken commented.

“Where else but with that girl..” Stell mumbled. 

Ken softened. “How is she doing?” 

“Slightly better but she’s still in serious deflated mode. It’s a chore just getting food down her throat. She says that the smell of it is repulsive.” Stell shook his head. “Can’t even watch a movie without crying halfway through. I was up nearly the whole of last night listening to her woes.” 

Sejun caught the look that Justin shot him, a quick, understanding, concerned look. But he was too tired to acknowledge it. It was strange, he thought dully, strange and he don’t understand it. He felt that he could go through his entire life without ever fully understanding it. Or perhaps he really did understand it, only that he refused to face it? Was it a sort of defense mechanism? Defense mechanisms were sometimes very useful. 

“Sejun,” Justin said when the day was over and Stell had rushed off again after a muttered Thanks for the hard work to the group. “I think I get it now.” 

“Get what?” 

“The whole thing about being busy… one is never really too busy, right? If one cares enough?” 

Sejun smiled, though it hurt his cheek muscles. “I thought you’d get it in a distant future.” 

“I think… you… I think you…” 

“It’s okay.” Sejun slung his bag over his shoulder and headed towards their lockers. 

“It’s part of the community guidelines, you see.” 

“What is?” 

“That every member of the unrequited community has to deal with the person being too busy.” 

Sejun walked fast and Justin had to hurry to keep up with him.

SB19 didn’t have anything scheduled for the next weeks, and so Sejun found himself wandering aimlessly down his hometown, watching the teenagers laugh and gossip at the cafes, almost as though they didn’t have a care in the world. He envied them this freedom, no – this appearance of freedom. 

He went into that restaurant and tried to imagine Stell beside him. Stell’s reactions to the quaint furnishing, the slowly rotating ceiling fans, the oddly shaped lights that, the store owner informed him, were all the rage right now. 

As he ate, he re-experienced the taste; how Stell’s eyes would light up at the burst of flavours in his mouth, how he would proclaim it to be delicious, how he would propose future visits to the same store. He saw it so clearly that it was more real than reality would have been.

“I found this store by accident,” Sejun said to Dream Stell, “just trying to find a relatively inexpensive store to eat at one day, and I saw the menu outside and walked in.” 

“It was good luck,” Dream Stell said. 

“And it brought you here with me, and we’re here together,” Sejun said. 

Dream Stell did not respond because Sejyn had long since constructed a mental block in imagining any response that Stell would give to an admission of sentiment. 

He murmured aloud, “We’re here together.” 

He thought, we will probably never be. 

Regardless, when they met up again for a series of training, Sejun snatched a couple of moments alone with Stell to ask, “When are you free to visit the restaurant?” 

Stell looked faintly puzzled – he was very distracted that day. “Restaurant?” 

“Yeah, the one in our hometown…” 

Stell blinked uncomprehendingly. “I’m sorry, come again?” 

Sejun repeated, “The filipino cuisine. The one that you said you wanted me to take you to.” 

“Oh!” Stell had the grace to look abashed. “Right. Uh… I’m free this Saturday night.” 

Sejun hurriedly cancelled his original intention of asking his friend out for a karaoke session that Saturday night. “Okay, sure. Um, around 7pm?” 

“Yeah, that’ll be fine. Where shall I meet you?” 

“The mall's bus station will do.” 

“Okay.” Stell seemed to consider the matter settled then as he drifted off into his distractions, and Sejun sensing his detachment, left.

Sejun knew it would happen, he just didn’t know why he still went anyway. 

He spent an hour deciding on his outfit, another half hour talking to his mother to ease the strange feeling haunting his stomach, another fifteen minutes skimming through his phone for articles that he had already read that morning, and ended up arriving at the bus station half an hour early. 

Justin sent him a text message.

Jah: Good luck!!! ^_^ Tell me all about it tomorrow, ok? I’ll be cheering you on from home!

Sejun wanted to thank him, but couldn’t find the words. He leaned against the wall and idly observed the people passing through the terminal. A middle-aged lady dressed up like an 18 year old in stockings and tanktop with gaudily dyed hair; a stooping old man with a careworn face that looked like it had never smiled before; a herd of giggly schoolgirls who made eyes at two gangster-like boys standing not too far away; a frowning, anxious-looking woman in a power suit talking without a full stop into her phone. 

He looked up and saw that the sun had disappeared into the mysterious spaces of the sky and the yellow, tearing brightness of sunset had dimmed on the heads of the tightly clustered crowd. When his phone rang, Sejun realized that he had been waiting for it. “Hello.” 

“Hey Sejun, it’s me,” Stell’s voice said.  
“Uh… I know this is really last minute…”

“Mmm.” 

“I hope you haven’t reached yet? Uh, I’m with Mary now and I think she needs me around, I can’t get away – don’t think I can make it for the dinner.” 

Sejun glanced at his watch. 6:40pm. Mary’s apartment - was deep in the residential areas of Manila.

“Sejun?” 

“Yeah, I’m still on the line.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Can’t you… rush over? I’ll wait.” 

Stell sounded genuinely distressed. “I wish I could, but it’s just tough. I can’t get away.” 

“Not even around 8pm? Or 9?” 

“Well… god really. I don’t know…” 

Sejun gripped his phone. He thought he must have said something, only he didn’t know what, because he couldn’t hear anything coming out of his mouth. 

Why? he thought. He knew it would happen, He knew it would happen… so why? 

His suspicions that something had been said were confirmed when Stell replied, “Shit Sejun, I know.. but I can’t leave her right now. Look, I’ll make it up to you okay? Tomorrow, for lunch? My treat.” 

“O-.” Sejun choked a little. “Okay.” 

“You’re not there yet, right?” 

“No.” 

“Good.” Stell sounded relieved. 

“I’ll meet you tomorrow then. I know this pretty good ramen place in the mall. See you there 'kay? Around 1.” 

“Okay.” The call disconnected and Sejun put his phone back into his bag. 

He continued standing there, hands in pockets leaning against the wall, hat drawn over his face, watching the meaningless unending stream of people going through the entrance.

It never stops, he thought. 

Will it ever end? 

All these people rushing to go somewhere, be some place? 

He laughed a little but it hurt his throat, so he decided to stop laughing until the pain went away. An elderly man got up from the bench beside him and so Sejun sat down in his vacated place. 

He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms and thought of the very first time he’d seen Stell, all blond and unapproachable, and of how intimidated he had been. How that intimidation had led to a sort of fascinated interest in Stell and all that he did… and how much more intrigued he’d been when he caught sight of Stell resting his head on Josh’s lap one evening with the most tranquil expression on his face. 

He thought of how Stell had coached him in his dancing, given him tips in singing, helped him through the fanservice attention and covered it all up under barbs and seeming coldness off cam.

Stell was so soft inside but he could never bear to show it. Stell always put his friends first. Stell would go to any lengths to help out or protect his friends. Sejun remembered how tired Stell looked whenever he arrived in the dressing room after a commute, full of prickles and frustration at the arrangement that condemned them into working in a job meant for two people. 

Sejun thought of putting a blanket over him, holding his hand and lulling him to sleep, soothing the creases away from his brow and watching the tiredness melt into rest. He’d always wanted to do that. 

Meeyaoweou, he thought, have you gone back to your owner yet? 

No. You kept away, didn’t you? Because you knew that somehow it wasn’t worth the pain going back. That you could strike out on your own and be independent. 

Meeyaoweou.. in so many ways, countless ways in fact, I’m like you. It’s not that I’m not going back, but that I’m finally… finding the ability not to go back. 

The ability to stop loving him. Was that the change within me that I had felt - this ability that was born during the hiatus? I tried so hard. I tried so hard to love him in as many ways as possible. I wanted to do so much for him. 

But how can you do something for someone who so steadfastly doesn’t want you to? How can you love someone as much as you can when that someone doesn’t want you to love him? 

Meeyaoweou, you and me, maybe we can leave together. The moon river. Wider than a mile, maybe we’ll be able to cross it in style someday. Till then, two drifters, off to see the world. 

But what a heartbreaker, isn’t it? What a heartbreaker. 

Sejun sat there till it was so dark that the street lamps were the only source of light in the city and the terminal staff came over to tell him that they were closing down. 

He got up then and walked out, knowing that the possibility – the little inkling of chance – that Stell might still somehow walk through the terminal and wave to him was officially gone. 

He walked and walked and walked until he realized that he had walked past three streets and that somewhere along the way, tears had fallen down his face. He slide open his phone and dialled Justin’s number. 

Justin answered with a groggy, “Sejun?” 

“Hey.”

“What’s up? It’s…2:30!” 

“I just thought… or rather, I’m thinking… it should be raining.” 

“Huh?” 

“It should be raining, shouldn’t it? In dramas, it always starts raining during scenes like this.” 

Justin paused uncertainly. “Stell…?” 

“No show.” 

“Oh god! Why?” 

“He was with Mary, he said he couldn’t get away.” 

Justin groaned. “Damn. Where are you? Do you need me to come get you?” 

“No. I’m fine, I can catch a taxi back. I just wanted to tell you that I’m resigning as chairman.” 

On the other side of the line, Justin caught his breath. Did Sejun sound as though he had been crying? 

Sejun who hardly ever cried unless, as he said before, it was worth the effort? 

“When, Sejun? With three years’ notice?” 

“By grace, three months. I’m learning how to work my reverse gear.” 

“Sejun…” Justin's voice broke.

“You see, I realized something.” Sejun's tone was casual, practically conversational. “Stell is always there when people he cares about need him. He’d do anything for them then. Well… he was too busy for me.” 

“Sejun, it’s pointless thinking like that. You know Stell cares for all of us…”

“No,” said Sejun. “It’s been four years. I’ve been following him every step of the way. I said I didn’t have any hope, but it wasn’t true. Deep inside me I always had hope. But I’ve never seen it so clearly as I did tonight – that actually, there really isn’t any hope. I’m tired now. I want to let it go. So I’m reversing. Maybe somewhere out there I’ll find my heart again… I hope it isn’t too broken.” 

Justin sniffed, because his friend’s pain always hurt him more than his own. “Do you need me around?” 

“Not at the moment,” Sejun said, and laughed quietly. “But you’re always a phone call away.” 

“I am. I’ll be clinging on to my phone, waiting for my Kuya Sejun to call.” There was a slight pause. 

“It’s strange,” Sejun said softly. “It was such a bitter membership, but it’s hard to leave.” He sighed. “It had its joys too. Just being near him, and with him... leaving means weaning myself from those joys, right?” 

Justin wiped his eyes. “Mmm.” 

“Jah, do you think the recovery period will be bearable? I hear that healing is more painful than the wounding itself.” 

“You’ll get through it. You’re strong.” 

“Thanks,” said Sejun. “Back I go, back and back. And I’ll get stronger with every backwards step I take.” 

And so, the end began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts? comments? (ノдヽ)


	7. Lost String Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy reading (⌒‐⌒)
> 
> someone asked for the rain?

Justin: How is your heart doing?  
Sejun: Operation in progress. I think it’ll do okay

“I don’t know how I got conned into coming here.” 

“You have to relax and cheer up and this is the perfect place!” 

“Justin, you know I hate theme parks.” 

“Nobody hates theme parks!” 

Sweeping statement, not worthy of a rebuttal. Justin skipped off to the drink store and Sejun settled down on a bench, watching the Viking Ship swing wildly from side to side. 

He could not understand why people would feel excitement in sitting in a rocking make-believe boat. Why didn’t they take the time off to go on a real boat instead? 

Justin came back with two cold bottled iced tea and Sejun took his quite gratefully. “So how long are we planning to stay here?” 

“Don’t be so eager to go, Sejun!” Justin flopped down beside him and sucked noisily at his drink. “You haven’t come out in weeks!” 

“For good reason,” Sejun returned. 

Justin batted his arm. “Think of all the good things I’ll be able to post about in our social media accounts.” 

“Onwards and upwards for the one-track mind!” said Sejun teasingly. 

Justin grinned, but looked over his friend surreptitiously as he could, because Sejun was quick to notice when someone was studying him… most especially Justin, who was about as surreptitious as an elephant at the best of times. 

Sejun wasn’t looking good, Justin decided; his face was strained and his eyes looked slightly puffy. Puffiness did not become Sejun. 

“How was the operation?” Justin asked casually. 

“Oh, it was a success,” Sejun replied evenly. “Of course, the recovery period will take some time. But what matters is that it was a success.” 

Before he could stop himself, Justin let out a deep sigh; all sorts of disappointments and sympathies resonating in that outtake of breath. “Ah, seriously Sejun?” 

Sejun nodded towards the nearest signboard, which loudly proclaimed the thrill and adventure in plunging downwards a scarily meagre track in a little cart. “Do you sense the signboard that’s hanging around my neck now? 

「Looking for a receiver of hearts to keep mine safe. 」

That’s what it says.” 

“I offer to take it,” said Justin. “Will you give it to me?” 

Sejun laughed, bitter and amused at the same time. “Not to you. You’ll lose it within hours.” He stood up. “Come on. I know you’re hankering after that roller coaster. To prove that I’m still interested in your friendship even if I wouldn’t let you give a dime for my heart, I’ll sit through it once.” 

Justin pretended to pout as he got up. “Can’t you sound a little more positive about it?” 

“Don’t ask for too much.” 

At the end of the day, Sejun seemed more cheerful and his smiles came a little more readily. Justin was comforted but only vaguely, because he knew that it was a surface cheerfulness. 

Sejun would go back home and shut himself up in his room and Justin would have no way of knowing what Sejun went through by himself. Because for the first time ever since they became friends, he could not read Sejun and Sejun was silent. 

Josh turned over and felt his mind extricate itself from the mists of sleep. It was strange, he thought, how randomly one could wake up from sleep and drift right off again for seemingly no reason at all. 

He continued lying there for a while without moving, enjoying the coolness of the air against his face. Then, slowly, he became aware of a sound; the soft, surreal sound that had probably pulled him out from Neverland into the place of the awake and conscious for a few minutes. 

Josh opened his eyes and saw Justin fast asleep beside him, his mouth slightly open. Justin always gaped when he sleep. Stell said once that he looked a bit like a fish. Josh thought that Justin was too cute to be called a fish, but he hadn’t contradicted Stell because nobody ever did contradict Stell. 

He shifted his glance away from Justin to someone sitting by the window. Sejun, he realized. Sejun with a guitar propped on his lap and strumming softly, fingers running over the taut strings as he gazed out into the night. Coaxing from his guitar notes so hushed and ethereal that Josh had to strain his ears to catch them. 

Josh thought of making his way through the messy and half-completed lyric sheets strewn about the floor, the empty rattling soda cans, and his and Ken’s discarded guitars to sit down with Sejun by the window and dream together. Then the notes stopped and Sejun raised a hand to brush at his cheek.

And Josh realized that Sejun was not on his dreams – had not been dreaming at all. Josh squinted and thought he could see the beam of a light from a building opposite reflect itself on Sejun’s cheeks. Sejun’s face was wet with tears.

Half-scared, Josh closed his eyes and remained very still, very quiet, so that Sejun would not suspect anything. He felt the heaviness in the air draw out all the coolness and descend upon him, stifling him.

Sejun thought he was alright, really alright. After losing his heart for four years, watching from afar, aching from afar, always from afar and never venturing close except the one time.

One time four years ago, when he had faced rejection and accepted it - he had operated on his heart and it was a success. He thought of how resilient every living thing in the world was. 

Ants that struggled and lifted objects larger than themselves and scrambling by, day after day, in a world that did not want them.

War veterans who had seen the harshest, cruellest side of humanity and yet managed to come home and carve out a life for themselves away from the horrors they had experienced.

Tiny green shoots of grass poking up from the earth after being trodden on countless times by hasty and uncaring feet. 

And he felt that if those recoup, he had the capability to be resilient. To recover, to heal… completely. Definitely. 

Only when the rain came and hit at the doors of his heart did Sejun fall into its association again. The long ago association that he’d made with a broken-hearted love and during those times he felt that after all he wasn’t resilient. He was still so very weak, so vulnerable that the slightest of pushes could send him reeling. But generally, he was okay. 

He tried not to think of Stell’s lazy, delicious smile. Tried not to recall Stell’s slight touch of his hand. Tried not to recapture Stell’s few words of encouragement that were banal from anyone else but brought colour into life when coming from him. Stell’s laughing, ironical voice – tried not to think of all the memories that had comforted and strengthened him for four years. 

As long as he persevered in not remembering, he was fine. Someday he would be able to listen to rain and think only of the atmospheric processes that brought about this outpouring of water from the clouds. 

Someday he would be able to look at Stell and not be reminded of his disfigured heart, his stark joys and loneliness, and what could have been if only fate had turned the other way for him.

It was drizzling, a light mist that was too faint to be called rain, yet heavy enough to warrant some sort of shelter. Stell rested his hands on the window sill and stared out, wondering if he should borrow an umbrella from someone or just make a run for it whenever he was out in the open.

He was just about to decide on borrowing an umbrella when he heard footsteps approaching and another person’s breath filling the air. Stell turned his head and saw Sejun standing behind him, face flushed, breathing a little harder than usual. Sejun ducked his head, looking at his shoes, then raised his eyes to meet Stell’s. 

“Uhmm hi there…” 

Stell tried to smile but it was hard to make it convincing because his heart was thudding painfully in his chest. 

“Are you leaving already?” 

“It’s raining …” 

“Yeah, it is.” Sejun came forward and stood beside Stell, peering out at the drizzle. 

His breath misted the window and Stell stared at it, mesmerized, wanting irrationally and inexplicably to run his finger across the condensation.

Sejun’s arm grazed his slightly and he registered the warmth of Sejun’s skin before he was suddenly lost in the sensations of Sejun. The scent of Sejun’s cologne, the stretch of his shirt across his chest, the curve and line of his double eyelid, the red moisture of his lips, the line of his defined jaw… a million little details and fine lines that crowded Stell’s mind in an instant and rendered him blind and deaf to everything except Sejun. 

Then Sejun took a step backward and Stell had to force himself to stand still instead of moving instinctively to maintain their proximity.

“I hate the rain,” Sejun stated. 

“Is it worth your hatred?” 

“Yes.” Sejun seemed like he wanted to say something more, so Stell kept quiet. 

Silence stretched across several moments before Sejun finally spoke again. “Thank you.” 

Stell blinked. “For?” 

“For tolerating me for so long.” The slightest of trembles betrayed Sejun’s voice. But he swallowed and was steady again. “I just want to tell you that you don’t have to be bothered by it anymore.” 

Stell didn’t ask. He simply stared at Sejun with a little questioning frown. 

“It’s fine now,” said Sejun. “Let’s work well together as groupmates, okay?” 

Then realization dawned upon Stell. “You mean you…” 

Sejun nodded, smiling, expecting Stell’s relief. 

Stell gripped the window sill in a vain effort to steady his trembling arms. He had not thought that someday Sejun’s love would be taken away from him. He had never thought of that. 

Sejun's love had always been so constant – to be deprived of it so suddenly was like moving from a lush valley into a barren landscape. He tried to speak but he didn’t know what to say.

When Stell was quiet, Sejun stopped smiling. Sometimes, even a fake smile could not be maintained. 

“Nothing changes right?” he said. “We agreed from the beginning that nothing changed. We’re groupmates. Nothing more, nothing less. I tried before…” he paused, searching for the right words. 

Stell averted his face, looking down at the floor and Sejun was encouraged. “I guess,” he went on, “what I want to say is… I once loved you very much. But it’s over now and I want to go on as we were before.” 

Sejun nodded towards the window. “I will start liking the sound of rain again.” He stepped forward. 

Stell didn’t move. There was a hesitation before Sejun leaned in and kissed Stell very softly on the cheek.

There was something so final about the kiss that Stell wanted to pull him back in, kiss him on the mouth, make sure that he vanquished the finality. But he did nothing. 

Sejun turned and walked away and Stell didn’t move until the sound of his footsteps faded away. 

Then he turned to look out the window at the lightly falling drizzle, and thought: yes, he hated the rain too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how was it? comments would be lovely ♡


	8. Lost String Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still hyped over showbreak season 3 episode 8!!!  
> Stelljun preparing a cake for Justin's bday and "Coffee Prince" randomly appeared in one frame!!!

It was, after all, surprisingly easy to move on. Perhaps it was helped on by the fact that they only got close sporadically over the next few weeks for the interviews and guestings. Or perhaps it was that keeping close by Justin and Josh didn’t require him to interact much with Stell. But Sejun found it far easier than he’d expected. 

When he thought about it… if he ever thought about it… he likened his one-sided love story with Stell as a journey, a passage which had brought him across large wastelands and paradises of indescribable beauty, where he had rested and ached and laughed and cried… just a little.

He had gotten shot down over the Land of Rejection (where it always rained), had dwelled long and unhappily in the Land of Heartache (where music hurt your ears), had trudged his way towards the Land of Happiness (where the night skies were always starless), had shed tears in the Land of Separation (where one always exited from a bus station), and had wound up dusty and fatigued at the Land of No Time.

He had been on the very apex of happiness and he had seen the very depths of sorrow. 

When Sejun fell out of love with Stell, he became just a normal traveller who was happy at normal things and unhappy at normal things and was, on the whole, much more stable and less sleep-deprived. He was left with memories of a softly blowing breeze under a quiet night sky and an empty bus station teeming with chaotic traffic.

But although he missed those places during certain dreary, the melancholic days, he generally felt that his journey was smoother and less disappointing now that he didn’t have to expect anything. 

To keep things simple, Sejun was a reasonably contented traveller who had fits of melancholy. He never thought now about what could have been because he had left that all behind, in a distant land that he’d unmapped.

Stell thought he understood, after a week when Sejun had not spared him an extra look and they had talked to each other as coolly amiable colleagues with nothing of note in their common history. 

He thought he understood, when it rained one day and Sejun seemed to really like it, crowding around the window with Josh and Ken and making stupid bets about whether it would continue raining until the evening. 

He thought he understood, when he asked Sejun to come out for lunch with him during their break and Sejun had declined, politely and unconcernedly, stating that he had a lot of lyrics revision to do and was planning to cram in the dressing room with a lunchbox prepared by Tita Grace. 

He thought he understood, when he came out to the entrance of the their agency one evening and found Sejun standing on the steps, staring out at the main road. Sejun turned to him, smiled and said, “Thanks for the hard work today!”, and there had been nothing but respect in his tone, friendly and pleasant respect. 

Stell thought he understood, from that very moment when Sejun had leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, so softly and gently, as though that was how goodbye was. It was really over. 

Coincidence was such an inadequate word, he thought. For a word that encompassed all the strange coincidental things happening in the world, coincidence just really didn’t make the grade. 

Coincidence was meeting your friend overseas on the same holiday as yourself; or ending up working in the same office as your long lost college classmate; or finding out that the hot girl that you’d picked up at the bar was your boss’s sister. 

And then there was something called cruel coincidence, like turning up at a party and seeing some other guy wearing the exact same shirt as you were. 

But coincidence didn’t denote heartbreak. And whenever Stell tried to find a word to best describe his and Sejun’s story, there had to be an element of heartbreak involved. 

Actually, when Stell came to think of it, there were many words involved besides coincidence. Apprehension, unspoken actions, comfort, misunderstandings. What did you call that? Misunspokencomfortsion? Stell didn’t know - he wasn’t good with words like Sejun was. 

Come to think of it, maybe just the word ‘missed’ would do. There were so many ways you could use that word - missed chances, near misses, missing words. 

Stell remembered the coldness of the air stinging his cheeks as he stood in front of the terminal that night, looking at Sejun sitting by himself on the wooden bench against the wall, his hat shadowing his face. 

Stell had moved forward; then taken a step back. 

“Stupid, stupid,” a voice said beside him, and he had looked around to see Meeyaoweou scowling up at him. 

“You’re losing him. Right now, this very moment, you’re losing him.” Meeyaoweou had bounced up the steps and disappeared.

And Stell looked up to see that Sejun was gone and the station was closing down for the day. He had been close, so very close, to giving in… But Sejun had already given up. 

So really, all things considered, ‘missed’ would do.

\-------

“Stell, you’re not happy,” Ken stated as they ate dinner together after shooting a video content. 

They had been specially good-natured that day. Josh teasing and annoying the life out of Justin, Sejun happily chomping on dumplings that his mother had made for him, and Ken grinning at Josh’s foolishness, only to turn his head and see Stell staring morosely into space.

Just like he was now. 

Ken tapped the end of his fork against Stell’s hand. “Stell!” 

Stell blinked. “Yeah?” 

Ken sighed. “What’s wrong with you? You look so unhappy.” 

“What?” Stell said. “Which part of me looks unhappy? My eyebrows? Nose? My mole?” He considered for a moment, “Hands?” 

Ken pointed his fork at him almost accusingly. “Your voice sounds unhappy.” 

“How so?” Stell asked. “How does someone’s voice sound unhappy?” 

“Well, it sounds deeper to me.” 

“I believe people have another word for it: manliness.” Stell snorted. "Your heavenly voice can be manly at times too."

“If so, then you’re the unhappiest manly guy I’ve ever seen.” 

When Stell didn’t bother with a comeback, Ken softened. “What’s wrong?” he said, slightly teasingly. “Did some hot girl dump you very badly last night?” 

“Since when have you seen me getting worked up over a girl?” Stell returned, plopping a piece of grilled chicken into his mouth and chewing slowly, almost painfully. 

Ken staring at the way his friend worked unwillingly to swallow that piece of meat, suddenly realised that Stell had not been eating properly for a while. 

“Stell, you haven’t been eating?!” 

Stell rolled his eyes. “You’re not the most subtle friend I have around, that I can give you.” 

Ken knocked Stell’s arm worriedly. “What is it? Mary? She still hasn’t gotten over his boyfriend yet?” 

“Oh, that bitch.” Stell looked momentarily distracted at the mention of Mary. “She’s pulling herself together. But it’s not stopping her from leaving messages on their chatbox every night begging her ex to talk it over with her.” 

Ken smiled grimly. “She does get points for trying.” 

“So it’s not about Mary…” Stell played around with a bit of rice. “Is it so bad to be unhappy?” 

“Well, not exactly…” Ken said, “Everyone needs to be unhappy once in a while. If not, you’ll never know the value of happiness, right?” 

Stell smiled again, this time cynically. “Tell me that you’ve used that line in a pickup line before?” 

Ken blinked, then brightened. “I don’t remember, but it sounded cool? It sounded cool, right?” 

“Right.” Stell was generous. 

“So,” said Ken, returning to the matter at hand, “It’s not bad exactly but it’s not fun for me being with an unhappy you. If I am going to have to put up with an unhappy friend, then the very least you can do is to tell me why you’re unhappy. Then maybe I can be unhappy too and we’ll both be happily unhappy.” 

“Your philosophy...” said Stell, “goes beyond my wildest expectations. Even beyond understanding.” 

“Stell?!” Ken was frustrated now. 

“Okay, look,” Stell smirked at Ken's persistence. “I’ll tell you this, at least. Once upon a time, there was a wise guy who said ‘The saddest thing in the world is loving someone who used to love you.’ Do you know why that guy is an idiot?” 

Ken shook his head. “That quote sounds fine to me.” 

“He’s an idiot because it’s true.” 

“Uhmm…” Ken murmured. “Sadder than not having enough to eat?” 

“You haven’t been here, you wouldn’t know,” said Stell quietly. “I’m here now, and I can tell you what it’s like. It’s like nothing on earth you’ve ever known.” 

They stared at each other then resumed eating. Or rather, Ken did. Stell picked and pecked at his food and Ken noticed it more acutely than ever. But didn’t feel like commenting on it anymore. 

“It’s not that bad,” said Stell at length. “Maybe that’s how it was meant to be all along. It wouldn’t have worked out, anyway. We’ll just end up, thirty years later, meeting each other once or twice a year at our children’s wedding parties or big reunions and we’ll forget that all this ever happened.” 

“Is it possible? For Stell to forget?” 

“Reasonable, yes. Possible… maybe.” 

Surely, one could forget, even if it was forgetting a boy who had grown into a man - loving him and had looked at him out of eyes of infinite tenderness; had cared for him and thought of him without asking for reciprocality; and had finally kissed him and said goodbye. 

Stell convinced himself that he should forget. But forgetting was taking so much out of him.

\--------

Two months ago Stell hastily grabbed a fistful of notes and passed them to the driver. “Keep the change po.” 

No sooner had he scrambled out of the taxi that his phone rang. 

“Stell?” said Mary over the line, her nose still sounding very blocked. “Are you there yet?” 

“Yeah, I just got here.” 

“Is he still there?” 

Stell looked ahead and saw, almost immediately, Sejun sitting on a bench with his face shadowed and his hands clasped together. Stell’s throat went dry. 

“He is, isn’t he?” said Mary. “You should go to him.” 

“I don’t know…” 

“If you don’t, there won’t be a second chance. Learn from me. Don’t let something like that pass you by, okay?” Mary hung up then and Stell put the phone back in his pocket, never taking his eyes off Sejun. 

He knew that if he took that step forward, he would be committed for life. 

In the back of his mind, he thought of the desperate note in Sejun’s voice as he had said the one sentence that brought Stell, at eleven o’ clock in the night, to the bus station. 

「“But you promised you would be here.”」

Stell wanted so much to take that step but it was so difficult, because this was life, not a drama, and life wasn’t linear.

If he was forced to put a word to it, it was difficult because he was afraid. So afraid of what would happen if he allowed himself to love Sejun.

He took one step forward, then one step back. It was only when he looked up and saw that Sejun was gone that he realized how futile the difficulty had been, how stupid, because the risk of loving Sejun could not possibly be worse than the risk of losing Sejun. 

Two months ago Stell, breathing slowly and shallowly, looked out through the bus terminal crossing.

And two weeks ago, the condensation formed by Sejun's breath had evaporated as seen from misted windows, as Sejun slumped his shoulders. 

Before him, he could see his journey spreading out - a network of paths and lands that he would pass through without any idea of where they would lead him.

But Stell had arrived two months ago, inevitably, at its starting point. 

I’m here, Sejun.  
I’m here. 

I’m late, but I’m here.


	9. Lost String Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy reading ((ﾟ□ﾟ;))

“I’m afraid you have got a very lousy person for a friend.” 

Josh quirked an eyebrow at Stell, who was sitting on the bed and staring moodily at the games magazine laid out before him. “What have you done now?” 

“It’s more like what I haven’t done.” 

“What haven’t you done?” Josh complied.

Stell jabbed a finger viciously into the magazine. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Sometimes I feel like I can do it, and other times I just chicken out. I’m a stupid, doubting, fearful – coward.” 

Josh flopped onto the bed and stared at his friend curiously. “I’ve never known you to be cowardly. Think you’re dramatizing this just a little?” 

“Believe me, I’m not. You see…” Stell paused and looked at Josh, who was looking back at him concernedly. 

Stell debated for a moment before deciding to give it to him straight. “A couple of months on our training, Sejun told me he loved me.” 

Joshs mouth dropped open. “Loved you?” his voice was a squeak. 

“Loved me, yes.” 

“As… what? Younger brother? Senpai? Best friend?” 

Stell aimed a kick at Josh’s ankle. “Idiot. In the passionate, romantic, lovers-for-life sense.” 

Josh blinked wordlessly, then rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. I can’t absorb that. Come again?” 

“You’re just dying to make this hard for me.” 

“No I am not. You suddenly spring this on me that Sejun confessed to you like... four years ago and you expect me to accept that like it’s nothing? You better come clean and tell me everything.” 

“Well, maybe not everything…” Stell paused. “I can’t tell you everything. I haven’t told anyone about this before, so… it’s kind of hard to know where to start. So many things have happened.” 

“Easy, start from the beginning.” 

“I don’t even know where’s the beginning…” Stell rubbed his arm distractedly. “He told me he loved me and I said that I would never like him… you know, in that sense. And he said it was okay, he just smiled and walked out… and he didn’t mention it again.” 

Josh was quiet and Stell could tell that he was doing a backwards marathon over his memories to try and scourge up some evidence of Sejun’s love for Stell. 

Stell shook his head. “It’s no point doing that. You won’t remember him making kissy faces or staring for long periods at me. That wasn’t his way of loving me.” 

“Well…” Josh said slowly, “come to think of it you and Sejun never had much to do with each other, like you weren’t very interested. Fanservice, maybe? At those time they seemed bizarrely natural? But then you guys didn’t get along off stage.” 

“I know. I was a brat.” Stell admitted dejectedly.

“You were. So, go on. How did he love you then?” 

Stell shifted uneasily. “It’s hard to put it in words. It’s like he was always there you know? In the background so that he wouldn’t bother me. When our previous cover mates got into that shit, he was always doing things for me like getting Justin and Ken out of my face when they became too annoying. He never let up caring for me for a minute. But he didn’t say anything about it, he never said anything, it wasn’t his way to say things.” 

“Uh huh.” Josh was very intrigued. 

“And even when I hurt him…” Stell bit his lip at that memory. “Even when I purposely hurt him to make him give up on me, he forgave me. Just like that, without me even having to ask him to, without making a scene. He made his forgiveness felt. It turned out that he comforted me because he knew I was feeling like crap over what happened.” 

Josh's eyes suddenly lit up with a flash of remembrance. “That night, when you were crying in your room and you asked whether a person could burn in hell for deliberately hurting someone?” 

Stell nodded his affirmation. "He asked me out on a dinner. But I got caught up with Mary. He said he was not there yet, still... I had a feeling he told me a white lie. I was too shocked to move when I saw him still there. The next thing I knew he was gone."

“God! Stell. If it hurt you so much, why do that?” 

“Which is why,” said Stell darkly, “I am a stupid, brainless coward. The more I tell you, the more convinced you’ll be.” 

“I’m beginning to be convinced. Way convinced!” 

“And then during the hiatus…” Stell stopped. 

Josh, with the quick understanding borne from years of close friendship, flipped onto his back and threw his arm over his eyes. “During the suspension…?” 

Stell’s voice was a little unsteady. “I can’t tell you about that. It’s too hard. But when we came back, I was happy to see him. Really! I wanted to show him that I was really happy to see him. But I screwed up and – well. Things just turned out the way they weren’t supposed to. Now we’re sort of hanging, like we’re in this weird suspended balance where neither of us knows what to do.” 

“But Stell…” Stell peeked out at Josh. “You won’t ever fall for him, right? You… to put it bluntly, you’re straight. And even if… assuming you do fall for him, even if you two have a relationship, the agency will put that to rights pretty quick. For all you know, both of you might be fired.” 

Stell let out a little sigh of relief that Josh had seen the crux of the matter without any need of explanation. “That’s it. I keep thinking, but I can’t get around that. Somehow he touched me a lot with his love and it has come to mean a lot to me. And sometimes I feel – very strongly, that despite all that, I could probably learn to… return his feelings. But then I start thinking about homosexuality and the wrath of the agency and my parents and damn, how it will affect all of SB19. And then I can’t go any further. I shrivel up.” 

“It’s not as easy as 'I love you and you love me so let’s be together' huh?” 

“Nowhere near.” 

They were both quiet for a moment, then Josh said the one thing he knew was nagging Stell most. “But you know, he must have gone through all that too. Sejun’s a smart guy. But even though he must have known – he didn’t ‘shrivel up’.” 

“No, he didn’t,” said Stell quietly. “He just plunged in and loved me. And he does. He really does. Sometimes I wish that all this never happened and he had a normal girlfriend like any other guy. But then I think about not having his love – and then I get scared too. I’m pathetic all round.” 

“Hmm.” Josh just hummed for Stell to continue.

“I just think…” Stell began. “I just think, if only I could figure out which I was more afraid of – loving him or not having him – I would know what to do.” 

Josh shook his head and pushed himself up to a sitting position. “I can’t help you with that. You have to find that out for yourself. But to tell you the truth…” he looked over at Stell. “I think… if someone loved me like that, I’d have no choice. I'd receive the love and would feel that I have to love him back. There would be no way out of it.” 

… … 

“Josh…” 

“Yeah?” 

“I’ve figured it out, but I still don’t know what to do.” 

“Figured what out?” 

“I am… undisputedly and definitely and a hundred million times more afraid.. of losing Sejun than of loving him.” 

“Isn't that the same thing? Well then…” 

“The thing is…” 

“Tell him!” 

“The thing is…” 

“Stell come on! For goodness’ sake. Don’t be a coward anymore. Do this for you, for me. For both of us. For the sake of our ruined selves. You said you took the plunge and went to the station that night didn’t you? Why can’t you take it one step further then?” 

“Because, the thing is, I’ve already lost him.”

\--------

Sejun stood at the entrance to the car park, idly tapping out a message on his phone. He was tired, the strap of his bag was pressurizing his shoulder muscles but he didn’t feel like going home yet. 

These days, Sejun didn’t like to go home. Going home meant thinking thoughts that were much easier to suppress when he was outdoors. 

“Hey, Sejun!” 

He turned to see Ken walking up to him. “Going home?” 

“Not yet.” 

“A happening, huh?” Ken grinned. 

Sejun couldn’t help but grin back. “Not as happening as you might think. I don’t actually have anywhere to go but I just don’t want to go home.” 

Ken looked at the silent cars in the car park, then at Sejun, who was putting his phone away. “Why don’t we go out then?” 

Sejun was so surprised that he blurted out, “We?” 

“Yeah, the two of us. We haven’t ever gone out together, have we?” 

“Not… that I remember…” 

“Not that I’ve ever asked you to. Or that you’ve ever asked me to.” Ken reached out and grabbed Sejun’s hand. “Come on! Let’s have fun!” 

“But where do you want to go?” 

“Anywhere! The first place you can think of. Come on. What’s the first place you can think of?” Ken leaned in and stared at Sejun’s face expectantly. 

“Uh… arcade?” 

Ken smiled brightly and infectiously. “Great! Let’s go to the nearest arcade..” 

Sejun was drawn into Kens enthusiasm despite his misgivings. “We’ve been released from work early and you want to go to an arcade?” 

“Yeah! Let’s go. You're going to book a cab or my account?” Ken didn’t wait for Sejun to answer. “But uhmm.. let’s take yours. I have used all my credits already. Haha!” 

Sejun had to laugh. “That is so random.” 

“Let’s spend a random day!” Ken made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay?” 

It was as though Sejun was seeing the sun for the first time in many years. Granted, he’d not seen it coming out but the warmth and brilliance were very welcome nonetheless. 

Sejun smiled and made the sign back at Ken. “Okay.” 

Behind them, Josh and Stell watched as Sejun and Ken, apparently on the best of terms, moved off in search of Sejun’s hailed taxi. Josh’s eyes were round with amazement. Stell was gripping the strap of his bag so tightly that his knuckles were white.

\-----

“Sejun, I love you.” 

There was only silence. 

“I love you, I love you.” 

“Well, you dumbass.” A tail was swished into Stell’s face and he opened his eyes to see Meeyaoweou rubbing his head with his paw. 

“You should have told him earlier, shouldn’t you?” Meeyaoweou jumped off the bed and padded over to the door. 

As a parting shot, he turned around and made sure his eyes gleamed very green in the dark. “And you shouldn’t have told him that lie about being too busy during the hiatus. I told you the story but you twisted it around. That’s not the way things went and you know it.” 

Stell half-closed his eyes; it was too much effort to keep them fully open when tears were blurring his line of vision. “I couldn’t tell him.” 

“Then all I can say is, serves you right.” Meeyaoweou lifted his tail and pranced out of the door. “I’m off to find him. A little birdie tells me he’s not like you, broken and crying in bed.” Then he poked his head around the door. “But you know, for many months he was just like that, crying over you.” 

Meeyaoweou shook his head half contemptuously, half pityingly. “If only you had seen it, huh?” He disappeared then.

And Stell continued lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, at all the missed chances and opportunities he’d thrown away. 

At that moment, he was beyond pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments would be lovely (･ω･｀人)


	10. Lost String Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy reading (･ω･｀人)

Amidst forgetting

Stell didn’t know what it was, when they went on their first concert after the suspension. He walked into the multipurpose room to find Sejun and Ken before the mirror - Sejun’s hands on Ken’s hair and both of them laughing, deep in camaraderie. Ken’s eyes sparkling up at Sejun in adoration for the attention lavished on him. 

Stell stopped for the fraction of a moment and felt his heart squeeze inside him, and he didn’t know what it was. 

“Stell!” Ken exclaimed, grinning at him in the mirror, “what do you have there?” 

“Lunch,” said Stell. 

Justin turned around to take a closer look. “It doesn’t look like what Ken was eating earlier,” he observed. 

“What do you mean?” Sejun asked. “All of us have to eat the same thing, don’t we?” 

“Ken’s was a heap!” 

Then, even though Stell didn’t find that very funny, all of them began laughing again, eyes crinkled and heads thrown back. 

Sejun started smoothing out Ken’s hair, chatting in a way that he had never once chatted to Stell. And Stell turned his back on them to sit at the table and struggle with his lunch. 

That evening, when he stood onstage, he drew out the high notes a little longer, wondering if Sejun was listening. Whether he got the message. Whether, even after everything that had happened between them, he still cared enough to get the message. 

Stell didn’t know what it was, when they sat around the dressing room relaxing in their own thoughts a couple of hours before the concert and Ken looked across the room and gave Sejun a very meaningful grin. The both of them brought out their guitars, moved to a corner of the room within Stell’s sight and began to strum, eyes on each other’s fingers as they jammed together, random melodies and familiar tunes and quick improvised lyrics, and Stell felt his heart squeeze again in that strange, unidentified way. 

“Ken’s gotten so good on the guitar right?” observed Justin idly from his vantage point near Stell. Then Justin went over to Ken and Sejun and flopped down on the floor beside them, listening to their music. 

Josh, earphones stuck in his ears and arm thrown over his face, pursed his mouth in sleep. 

Justin looked over at Stell. “Think Ken and Sejun should do a duet together?” 

“If it makes the fans happy, why not.” Stell coldly replied.

“So enthusiastic,” Justin muttered, and fell silent for a couple of moments. 

Stell continued watching Ken and Sejun play, twanging notes and guitar picks, in harmony and perfect understanding. When had they gotten so close? 

“There’s something I always wanted to ask you, Stell,” said Justin abruptly. 

Stell glanced at him, half-irritated. “What?” 

“Now that it’s all over and done with… I just wanted to know, that night - I don’t think you’ve forgotten it – that night when you invited Sejun and I to your place and then introduced your girlfriend.. err ex-girlfriend to us, how did you expect Sejun to deal with it? Even if you had done that for what you thought was his own good… how did you expect him to deal with it?” 

Stell turned his eyes away from Justin to Sejun’s smiling face. “I told him to bring you along, didn’t I?”

Stell didn’t see the sudden open-mouthed realization dawning on Justin, nor did he notice that Justin quickly dropped his line of questioning. Instead, he watched Sejun poke Ken’s hand lightly and laugh, in that endearing way that only Sejun could laugh. And wished very hard that he knew what that feeling was, because it was breaking him from the inside.

“You know, Sejun…” Justin was hesitant. 

Sejun, wrapped up in his quilt and snuggling half-asleep in its warmth, murmured, “No, I don’t know.” 

“Maybe Stell isn’t… wasn’t… as hard hearted as he seemed to be.” 

Sejun blinked and looked at Justin, fully awake. “What do you mean?” 

Justin fidgeted. “I think he cared, in his own way.” 

“Why are you saying this now?” 

“I… he… I talked to him and…” 

“You talked to him?!” 

“No! Not really! It’s just that he said something and I suddenly realized that he really did try, you know, to make things a little easier for you and…” 

“Don’t mention it.” Sejun was angry. “Don’t talk to him about it! It’s over, don’t you see? I don’t talk about it, he doesn’t talk about it, so you don’t talk about it either! It’s all behind us now, it doesn’t matter what he did or what he felt, it’s behind us and we don’t talk about it anymore.” 

“B-but…” Justin stammered, awed into disbelief that Sejun was actually angry with him. “Is it right, not to say anything as though nothing ever happened?” 

“In case you forgot, nothing did happen. It was all nothing, four years of nothing. Therefore there isn’t anything to talk about nothing.” 

There was a long pause. Justin placed both his hands under him and tried not to squeal at their coldness. Sejun turned over and lay facing the window, his back rigid. 

“Sejun, don’t be mad.” Justin’s voice was pleading. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

“The best way not to upset me will be to forget the whole thing.” 

“I can’t forget but…” 

“Can’t you see I’m trying every day? Every day I forget a little bit, I don’t try to reel it in. I let it go and I lose that bit of me, every day it happens and I’m forgetting. I don’t want to be reminded.” 

“I can see it now, I really can. I’m sorry.” 

“Let’s go to sleep.” 

“You aren’t mad with me anymore?” 

“I’m still mad at this moment, but tomorrow morning… I’ll forget this too.” 

Sejun kept his word and when the next morning rolled around, Justin made a note to himself not to mention it ever again, for as long as Sejun wanted to forget.

The tour went on, though Stell felt that despite all the members’ exuberance at being together and performing again, sometimes it was almost impossible to go on. When they landed in the next stop, bright sunshine awaited them while Josh is annoying Justin by being overly hyper. 

Ken pushed an arm into Stell’s unwilling crook and whispered, “Cheer up, Stell! We’re going to have a great time here! I heard the hot spring is great.” 

“How do you know I’m not cheered up?” Stell returned. 

“I don’t know, because…” Ken paused to think. “When Josh and Justin skived off practice to buy snacks in our previous leg, you didn’t say anything.” 

“That is a proof of not being cheered up?” Stell scoffed, but he didn’t pull his arm away. 

Ken was right about the onsen being fantastic. Sejun, Justin and Josh remained inside for ages, chatting on and off about the concert, how interactive the audience had been, how great everything was.

Stell thought, as he sat opposite them watching Sejun close his eyes against the steam rising from the water, that there couldn’t be a sight in the world more beautiful, not the city lights blinking beyond his head nor the sexily dressed girls down in the hotel bar who had tried to approach him with smoky eyes and flickering kisses. 

He and Ken stayed for a while longer after the rest left. Ken because he was half-asleep and comfortable, Stell because he wanted the cover of darkness to hide the saltiness on his lips. When he came out he found Sejun sitting on a brown leather chair, head down and muscles relaxed. 

Justin and Josh were fooling around with the hand camera. All of the sudden Ken was nowhere to be seen - most probably off on one of his food-hunting night expeditions again. 

Stell sat down in the chair beside Sejun. “Good performance today.” 

Sejun raised his head and gave him a quick smile. “You too.” 

Stell leaned back in the chair and gazed up at the ceiling, wondering if there were stars above the roof of plaster and paint. “You’re getting better and better.” 

“So are you,” said Sejun. “Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang. It’s a really good song.” 

“You like it?” 

“It touches me,” Sejun said quietly and unemotionally, as a music critic would. 

But Stell felt his fingers curl into the leather of the chair. “I’m glad. It’s supposed to touch…” 

Sejun turned and looked at him, out of eyes that were so clear, and Stell found himself clenching his fists. 

“It’s supposed to touch people.” 

Sejun said nothing to that. 

Stell pushed himself up. “Hey, why don’t we go for…” 

“Sejun!” Ken peered in on them. “Do you want to come out for supper? I’m hungry!” 

“Sure,” said Sejun, getting off the chair. “Let me change my clothes first.” 

Ken stayed behind for a moment. “Do you want to come too, Stell?” 

Stell looked at Sejun, who had headed out of the room without a second glance. “No thanks,” he said. 

He watched as Ken saluted him and spun off to catch up with Sejun, slinging a companionable arm around his shoulders. Sejun tilted his head and smiled at him, and Ken smiled back without guile, confident in their friendship and love for each other. 

Stell leaned back again and closed his eyes. He thought he could finally identify the unknown feeling that was squeezing his heart so painfully.

\--------

“So here’s the thing,” said Ken, brandishing his glass around like a weapon, “here’s the thing.” 

Sejun reached out instinctively to grab hold of his hand before Ken splattered him. “What’s the thing?” 

“The thing is,” Ken continued, “I hate this… this downright stupid and medieval way of thinking that a guy has to go through all the proper channels and end up wearing a tie in a company running errands for his boss in order to secure his future! I’ve had a job since when and it pays me just right and I don’t report to a boss and I’ve enough money even though I don’t exactly have enough time to spend it, and yet they say there’s something wrong with me?!” 

“Er,” said Sejun, “actually, there will be something wrong with you if you don’t stop drinking soon. You’ve knocked down four glasses in the last hour.” 

Ken glowered at him in the most intimidating way that he could. “Can we get back to the point please?!”

“Sorry.” There was a slight pause. 

Ken tapped his glass distractedly with a finger and Sejun glanced out of the window, mentally reminding himself never again to go out with Ken the week after he returned from a visit with disapproving relatives. It seriously limited the topics of conversation. 

“I think,” said Ken, “that I should have some iced water after this.” 

An hour later, Sejun, holding on to a very heavy Ken, flagged down a cab and struggled to get both of them inside with minimum waiting time for the driver. Ken flopped against Sejun's shoulder and he had to reach over to pull Ken’s seatbelt over him. 

“Move over a bit."

Ken obliged, but only slightly. “Cab fare,” he slurred. “Nightsh…surcharge. Expensive.” 

“You’re the one who wanted to go out,” Sejun said. 

Sejun strapped himself in and watched as they entered the steady stream of cars moving along the roads. The streetlamps passed, one after another, each trailing orange light. He could see the imprints of someone’s fingers highlighted on the window and he reached out to rub them away. 

The cab driver turned on the radio with the sound was muted, soft, jazz. Traffic lights changed from red to green and cars resumed moving. 

Ken, breathing noisily, fell sideways and leaned his cheek on Sejun. Inadvertently, Sejun placed a hand on his head; Ken’s hair was soft under his hand, his skin warm with heat, his eyelids barely trembling. 

“Sejun,” Ken murmured. 

Sejun felt his own eyes closing, his mind slowing down as Ken relaxed against him. Almost unconsciously, their hands entwined. Ken’s fingers were a little rough, as though he did heavy work around the house. Warm and heavy on Sejun’s hand, not like Stell’s, not like that little, ghost-like touch of Stell’s hand that had hardly been tangible. 

We’re here together, his mind said, it brought you here with me, and we’re here together. 

“Sejun,” Ken murmured again, his voice smooth and mild, not scratchy around the edges, not squeezed nor sharp. 

「Love me.」

That mild voice, just a slight bit above a whisper. 

Sejun said, “I can’t” but he fell into sleep that same moment and he wasn’t sure if he got the words out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments? (￣□￣;)!!


	11. Lost String Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy reading (･ω･｀人)♡

The tour was nearing its close when Meeyaoweou made an unexpected appearance one day, sidling in through the hotel room door and squatting beside Stell’s bed, waving his tail around lazily. 

“Good morn-ing,” he drawled. 

Stell sat up in bed and stared at him. “Where did you come from?” 

“Sejun’s room.” Meeyaoweou turned his nose up. “That Josh was snoring so loudly, I wonder how Sejun got any sleep at all.” 

“You came all the way here to tell me that?” 

Meeyaoweou gave Stell one of his gleaming green-eyed looks, then got up and strolled over to where Ken was lying dead asleep on his bed. 

Meeyaoweou sat back and gazed at Ken’s face for a long, contemplative moment. “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” 

“You’re a cat, don’t say such weird things.” 

“How is it weird to say that he’s handsome?” said Meeyaoweou, affronted. “Empirically he is handsome.” 

Stell rolled his eyes and leaned back on his elbows. “I don’t think you came here to have a discussion on whether Ken is empirically handsome or not.” 

“Well,” said Meeyaoweou with what almost felt like quiet satisfaction, “this empirically handsome guy has been out with Sejun almost every night. You’re losing big time, my dear.” 

“You aren’t much better, you hypersensitive cat. They always ask me to go too or the other members.” 

“Ah ha!” Meeyaoweou narrowed his eyes. “But you don’t go, do you? And neither do the others. So they end up alone together night after night and they’re enjoying each other’s company so much, that they don’t really want anyone else around. They just ask you now out of a confidence that you won’t go. If you actually accepted, they’d stop asking.” 

Stell swallowed. “Go away.” 

“Hm?” 

“I said, go away. I don’t need to hear this.” 

“Getting a little touchy here, aren’t we.” Meeyaoweou padded up to Stell and hopped onto his bed. “You know that I won’t be able to stop bothering you until you do something about the situation with Sejun.” 

“Why?” 

Meeyaoweou blinked and rubbed his head. “I thought I told you the first time we met.” 

Stell sighed. “Well, in that case, wouldn’t you have left already? A long time ago?” 

“That’s why I say you’re stupid. I’m still around, aren’t I? I haven’t disappeared nor have I become permanently attached to Sejun.” Meeyaoweou reached out and gave Stell a little push with his paw. “And I haven’t gone over to haunt Felip, either.” 

Stell was silent, trying to understand the implications. Meeyaoweou hopped effortlessly off the bed and wandered around the room, sniffing at random objects. He came across Ken and Stell’s shoes and veered off with a disgusted hiss. 

“As of right now, Sejun is having his breakfast in the dining room. He’s alone. Justin will be tinkering in the bathroom for an hour yet and Josh is choking up the atmosphere with his self-centered snores. SNOOORKKfoo, he goes. And as we can see, our empirically handsome Felip isn’t in the habit of waking up early on the mornings right after alcohol consumption.” 

“So you’re saying…” 

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. By the way…” Meeyaoweou paused and looked sober, and Stell suddenly got the feeling that the cat was going to be serious for once in his catty life. “Last night, Sejun told Felip a lot of things. If you don’t act soon, you’ll lose sight of me and Felip will start seeing me. Do you really want that to happen?” 

“Sejun…” 

“He can’t right now. But one month, half a year, one year later, who knows?” 

Stell got out of bed and stood uncertainly beside the cabinet. “What did he tell Ken?” 

“You don’t really need to know.” Meeyaoweou lifted a paw in dismissal. “Go.” 

A hasty change of clothes later, Stell was about to leave the room when Meeyaoweou’s next sentence fell like the blow of a hammer on his chest. 

“Just thought I’d let you know, Felip held Sejun’s hand, and Sejun didn’t pull away. You’ve never held Sejun’s hand privately, have you?” 

“No…” 

It had only been a glancing touch. 

When Stell turned back at last, mouth steady and eyes dry, Meeyaoweou was gone. 

Last Night.

It was a night like any other night, a bar like any other bar. Senun, lounging in his seat with a very satisfying glass of lemon-tinged iced water, did not immediately understand Ken's question. 

“I just want to know why,” said Ken. 

“Why…?” 

“That night in the taxi, you said I can’t. Why?” 

Sejun paused, thinking, so the words did come out after all. He suddenly felt cold, as though speaking out the words had made them a reality. Words, just noise from a voice box, shaped into sounds that could be understood... words, just sounds, shaping life with their infinite power. 

Stell walked into the dining room to find Sejun seated at the breakfast table buttering his toast with his eyes fixed on phone before him. He looked tired. 

“Morning,” Stell said. 

Sejun glanced up. “Good morning.” 

Stell sat opposite him and retrieved the pot of tea, wondering how it was that observation could exist concurrently with a lack of understanding. That he could tell at the first glance that Sejun hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and yet not have the faintest idea of why he had been victim to insomnia. 

Perhaps it came from years of being in the same group, living and working together, always keeping an eye out for tired or stressed out members in case they were too spent to give any sort of healthy contribution to the group. 

An involvement without sentiment. That is, until Sejun had fallen in love with him and then it had become an involvement of care. Sejun’s care, straight from his generous and loving heart.

It was such a strange thing telling someone the story of the unrequited community. Sejun had not told anyone of the story before. Justin, the first one in the know, had been there from the beginning and so did not need a narrative. And he knew that Josh, despite not having been told anything, had sensed the situation and put two and two together to create many fours. 

But now here was Ken listening, unconscious of all that had gone on between him and Stell over the past four years. And here he was, relating the story to someone whom half a year ago he would never have dreamed of telling. 

“You grew to love Stell the year you were training?” Ken asked. 

“Yes… quite soon after that… I thought it was just an infatuation at first. But later on I knew it wasn’t, and I told him even though I knew that he would never reciprocate my feelings. Even now I don’t really know why I told him. I guess I wanted to take the chance.” 

“You were so brave…” 

“There wasn’t any braveness involved. I didn’t have anything to lose. If he said yes, then I would have won. But if he said no, nothing would have changed… I would have been between winning and losing. So I took the chance.” 

Sejun paused for a moment, thinking of the sound of rain hitting the windows when Stell had looked at him straight in the eyes and said 'I don’t like you. I don’t think I ever will'. 

“And then…?” 

“There isn’t really an ‘and then’. We just passed through the years, me loving him, him not responding. I tried to care for him, you know? In ways that he wouldn’t notice. I don’t think I ever took my eyes off him… when he wasn’t looking. I loved listening to his voice. It was all I needed to make me happy. His voice, him being near me… that was all.” 

Ken was looking at him intently. 

“After that the suspension took place, and I think during that time I changed… or something inside me changed. When he and I didn’t talk for over half a year. Before the suspension, if you’d told me that one day I would stop loving Stell, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But after that…” 

“Wait,” said Ken. “You didn’t talk to him for over half a year?” 

Sejun nodded. 

Ken looked confused. “But I thought he tried to contact you? He asked me a lot about what you were up to. When I ran into Justin at the office, I asked him about you cause Stell wanted to know. So I assumed that… since he wanted to know about you, he would have given you a call.” 

I missed you. 

Sejun was suddenly transported back to a quiet Coffee Prince cafe on the night of holiday season, watching Stell’s face again, taking in every lineament and curve, trying to read in them what exactly had been underneath that calm veneer claiming that he had been too busy. 

He realized now that Stell’s story of Meeyaoweou had not been meant to turn out that way. But somehow… along the way… the real words had frozen on Stell’s tongue.

“Do you need me to put bread into the toaster for you?” Sejun asked. 

“Yes, thanks.” Stell replied, pouring tea into his cup. 

Sejun reached over to pop two slices of bread into the toaster. There was a moment between them, hesitant and full of thoughts, then Sejun looked at Stell. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

“Yes?” 

“Meeyaoweou…” Sejun breathed in hard, looking like he didn’t want to be saying what he was saying. “I would like to know… whether on our agency event… the holiday story… was it true that his owner did not look for him?” 

Stell thought of the empty bus station, Meeyaoweou’s scowl as he had bounced up the steps, Sejun’s soft kiss on his cheek, rain against the window, Ken’s hand in Sejun’s, the lighted blue of the swimming pool under a starless sky, Sejun’s forgiveness, Ken and Sejun going out together almost every night, Meeyaoweou’s possible disappearance, Sejun’s smile, Sejun’s laugh, Sejun Sejun SejunSejunSejun… Mentally, he took the step forward, and this time he didn’t step back. 

“No,” he said. “The owner loved Meeyaoweou so much that he searched high and low for him and when he found him. He asked Meeyaoweou to go back with him.” 

Sejun’s eyes softened. Stell laid his hand open on the table. 

“Sejun…” 

“No,” said Sejun. “Don’t say anything. Not yet.” 

The bread popped out of the toaster, jolting them out of half-vague, hurried thoughts. Sejun picked out the toast onto a plate and pushed it over. And suddenly Stell had the strange sensation that they were somehow living in another dimension and this was their home and their breakfast table, and Sejun was doing all these little daily mundane things in the morning. Mundane things that spoke of love and a life shared together. 

“And then I said goodbye to him.” 

By this time Ken was resting his face on his hands, eyes fixed on Sejun’s face. “A real goodbye?” 

“It seemed as real as it could get, to me at least.” 

“Can you really do that? Say goodbye to loving someone?” 

“I…” Sejun ran his finger down the condensation on the outer exterior of his glass. “I don’t know.” 

“Somewhere inside you… maybe you still have feelings for him, only you try to suppress them?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Sejun.” 

Ken reached over and grabbed hold of his hand, and for a quick moment Sejun thought he might pull away but surprised himself when he didn’t, and then it was too late. 

“You’re such a wonderful person, Sejun,” Ken said. “I hope you’ll be able to love again someday. I think… it would be such a blessing to be loved by you.” 

Ken smiled and Sejun found himself smiling back. 

They sat in silence for a long while, hands entwined, comfortable, until a memory sneaked itself into Sejun’s mind. 

The seemingly random, meaningless image of a small yellow leaf that he had seen sometime ago. It had disengaged itself from a tree branch and come floating down, twisting this way and that in the breeze, turning sideways and upside down. Beauty in motion. It had been impossible to take his gaze away from that tiny leaf turning in the air, sometimes in a macabre dance, at other times a light-hearted Sugar Plum Fairy ballet, at all times a symbol of something that had once lived and been beautiful. And then the leaf reached the ground and became just another dead leaf, stepped on by feet that had forgotten its beauty of mere moments before. Lying there, to be swept up in the morning along with a million other dead leaves, disposed into a black bag and carted off for incineration, to disappear from the earth as a leaf that had once danced in the breeze. 

Stell thought, as he watched Sejun return to his phone with only a slight tremble of the lips to indicate any sort of inner emotion, that this was it. This was how it was going to be, this was the understanding he’d arrived at after almost two years of weakness. 

He did not have the courage to give up on Sejun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update on tuesday.. 😂 don't miss me ahaha kidding!  
> i'll be on stelljun's wedding on discord tmr and twitter party this sunday!!!


	12. Lost String Chapter 12

Ken: I just heard about your upcoming musical! Congratulations! Do your best, ok!

Josh: Stell, heard about the musical, it sounds tiring but you’ll have fun! Ah, I’m jealous. Congratulations. Let’s go out for dinner before it starts ^^ 

Justin: ***CONGRATULATIONS!!*** Be sure to take care of yourself and remain healthy! Have a good time on it! 

Stell sat on the couch, passing his phone from hand to hand and occasionally biting his lips. 

Josh, spread out on the floor with the game control in his hand, took his eyes off the TV long enough to throw him a glance and say, “Just call him already!” 

“I don’t know if he’s doing something…” Stell hesitated. 

“You won’t know until you call, will you!” 

“Won’t it be weird to call him? Like I’m being too pushy?” 

When Josh didn’t answer, Stell poked him in the shoulder with his foot. “I’m asking for advice here.” 

“I already gave it! I said, call him.” 

Stell glared at the back of Josh’s head, but gave up when he didn’t get a response. “If you’ll turn down the volume, I’ll actually be able to hear what’s on the line.” 

Josh snorted, unimpressed. “Go into your room if you’re so deaf.” 

“I’ll have you know that we are sharing this dorm and I also have every right…” 

Five minutes later, Stell ended up in his bedroom with the door closed, scrolling through his phone contact list for the tenth time and finally arriving at the name he wanted. 

He looked unseeingly out of the window, trying to prolong the moment before he pressed call. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring ring ring. Ring riiing riiinnnnggg. 

“Hello?” 

Stell gripped his phone hard. “Hey, Sejun.” 

“Hello?” Sejun sounded incredulous. “What are you calling me for?” 

“Uh… I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.” 

“I’m waiting for the bus now… so you might have to keep it short.” 

“Yeah, it’s short. I was just wondering…” Stell fidgeted trying to get the words out naturally. “You know, just wondering whether you would be free to come out for lunch on Friday. Before I go off.” 

There was a pause, then Sejun said, “Oh yes. Your tour with the musical. Ken messaged me about it. 36 shows, that’s great. Congratulations.” 

“It is. I'm all giddy when I got the confirmation.” 

“It’s a big thing. You’ll be on the road for about three months?” 

“Yeah. Pretty hectic schedule, which is why I was thinking it would be great if we could lunch before I left. Won’t be seeing much of any of you guys until, well, the next recording or something.” 

Sejun laughed quietly. "You’ll probably be doing individual trainings at this rate.” 

“That’s right.” 

Sejun was quiet, and Stell felt hesitant about bringing up the topic of lunch again. Time ticked away and he felt the pressure of the unsaid words mounting on him. 

“Oh, hey,” said Sejun at last, “the bus is coming. Listen, about lunch on Friday… I have music class till one so it’ll have to be after that.” 

Stell almost sighed with relief, able to plan now that Sejun’s answer was affirmative. “No problem. In fact, I can pick you up when you finish. I’ll wait in the car park?” 

“Yeah, should be okay. Just message me when you’re here.” 

“I will…” 

“The bus is here now, I have to hang up…” 

“Okay. See you Friday.” The line disconnected. 

Stell closed his phone, breathing so hard that he thought running a marathon… or probably holding five dance routines in a row would have been a lot easier. 

Josh found him in his room fifteen minutes later, seated on his bed staring at the wall. “He said okay?” 

Stell nodded. Josh grinned. “Hey, that’s great. Wasn’t that hard, was it! So… you better take him somewhere nice.” 

“You make it sound as though I’m courting him.” 

“Well, in a way, you are, aren’t you?” 

Stell lifted his eyes to meet Josh’s, and the joy in them made Josh smile even wider. 

“Yes,” Stell acknowledged, “and it feels great.”

It was 12:45, and Stell was sitting in the car park, music on, watching the students drift past him as they made for their vehicles. It had been a long time since he was in a vicinity of a campus. Stell had never been a glutton for education and so he watched them with both detachment and curiosity. 

A couple of guys had backpacks, most of them wore sling bags. The girls were slim and beautifully dressed. Well, school was pretty much a mating ground where lessons were held, so that wasn’t surprising. 

His phone buzzed. 

Sejun: Finished class early, coming out now. 

Stell smiled and returned his handphone to the dashboard. Sejun's music academy was quite a nice ambiance, he thought, lots of trees and brown buildings. It was strange thinking of it as Sejun’s school; the place where insisted he spent half or more of his time learning more than what their agency provided. Idol forgotten or rather negated - just one of the students walking around with a sling bag and making eyes at attractive girls.

He saw a group of students walking slowly down the lane to the car park, all chattering away. Two guys in the front punched each other playfully; the girl behind them laughed and pulled them apart. They looked happy, carefree, all the things that Stell wasn’t – and then he suddenly realized that Sejun was among them. 

Sejun was walking in the middle, slightly taller than the rest of them with his laptop cradled in the crook of his arm and a bag thrown over one shoulder. The guy beside him leaned in and said something. Sejun replied and the whole group started laughing. Stell could hear their laughter from where he was seated. 

It made him realize that this was Sejun’s other life… their leader striving to learn more about music and scoring for their group, and here he is once again one of the top in his cohort, evidently popular and nowhere near as downtrodden as he sometimes seemed in SB19. 

Stell studied the faces of the other students milling around him, all young, laughing faces, and felt an irrational jealousy coming over him that they could spend hours around this confident, popular Sejun. A John Paulo Nase that he wasn’t sure he was acquainted with, even after nearly four years of working together. 

They were closer now and Stell started wondering with a bit of horror whether Sejun was intending to introduce his bunch of friends to him. Or had Sejun even noticed that he was there? Then the group stopped and Sejun exchanged complicated handshakes with a couple of guys, patted the girls on their shoulders. He said something and everyone laughed again, waved him off, and he turned and walked towards the car alone. 

Stell scrolled down the window. “I thought you were going to ask me to join all of you for lunch,” he said. 

Sejun grinned, glancing over his shoulder at his friends as they headed in the opposite direction. “They’re going to one of the cafeterias over that way, then staying back to work on a project.” 

“You don’t have to work on a project?” 

“Well, I’m lunching with you,” said Sejun, “then I’m coming back.” 

Stell nodded in acknowledgement that Sejun was giving up time for him, and the satisfaction in that knowledge cancelled out his earlier jealousy. He motioned to the passenger seat and Sejun got in beside him. 

“Where are we headed?” Sejun asked. 

Stell tapped his fingers on the driving wheel. “I thought we could fulfill an appointment that wasn’t a few months ago.” 

Sejun didn’t get it. “What do you mean, an appointment that wasn’t?” 

“Remember the family restaurant that you said was worth going to? We can go there today… a sort of make up for that time when we didn’t manage to go, you know.” 

Sejun stared at the windscreen, his face suddenly set and drawn, and Stell thought that all trace of the laughing student barely ten minutes before had now vanished into the John Paulo Nase that he was familiar with. It was as though the student couldn’t last five minutes around him. 

Stell sighed a little, rested his forehead against the car window. “Well, if you don’t want to, we could always go somewhere else.” 

“No, it’s fine,” said Sejun, turning to smile at him. “You’re right, it can make up for the time when we didn’t make it there.” He let a moment pass, then added lightly, “When you didn’t show, you remember... Is Mary all right now?” 

“She’s doing good,” Stell said, backing the car out of the lot. “I don’t think I managed to apologize properly for not showing up that time. Can I do it now?” 

“No worries,” said Sejun, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. 

Stell plunged ahead anyway. “I’m sorry. It was a terrible thing to do, cancelling out last minute especially since I was the one who asked you to take me there. I’ve been feeling bad about it ever since.” 

“It’s okay,” Sejun said, fiddling with the volume of the radio. “It’s over and done with. Let’s have a good time today.” 

Stell wanted to say more, indicate a little about how he had arrived late and seen Sejun sitting there alone against the wall with his face shadowed. But he knew that the time wasn’t right yet. So he smiled, as though the matter was settled with his apology and Sejun’s acceptance of it.

And they drove the short distance it required to take them from the workshop to the family restaurant in a silence that was companionable enough. 

“It’s weird,” Sejun murmured when they stood outside the store together, surveying the display. "A weird feeling being here.” 

“Why?” Stell asked. 

Sejun hesitated a little. “Well… I haven’t been here in months. Nothing seems to have changed. Somehow I thought that it would have changed, or maybe disappeared.” 

“You think too much.” 

“Maybe.” Sejun was willing to concede to that. 

Over the fragrance of food cooking on the grills and the chatter of other customers, Sejun raised his voice to Stell. “Once your tour is over, there might be some SB19 activities. Tough life, huh?” 

Stell dipped his spoon into the soup and put it in his mouth. Within seconds his eyes lit up and Sejun laughed at him. 

“It’s good!” Stell sputtered. 

“See what you’ve been missing all this while,” Sejun teased. 

“I see it now. What an idiot I am.” 

“This place is great.” 

“It really is.” Stell looked around reverentially, then remembered Sejun’s remark. “Tough life but there’s nothing we can do about it. Been doing this for years, it’s not like I have a choice other than run back and forth and try to keep myself in one piece.” 

“Mmm.” Sejun took a mouthful of rice and chewed slowly. “If you did have a choice, would you rather be in acting instead of group?” 

Stell pressed his finger against his glass of iced water and looked at the print left behind on the condensation. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to say no. I’d rather remain in two fields because I can’t let go of either one, but I really don’t know.” 

Sejun nodded. “That’s reality, no? Stell always looks so ti…” he paused and bit his lip. “Sorry. You always looks so tired whenever you come to a meeting directly after a commute from practice. We all feel worried for you, especially Justin. He’s always talking about going to our manager and demanding that you be given some rest.” 

Stell wasn’t concentrating. “You can call my name if you want.” 

“Huh?” 

“You did it just now, didn’t you? Stell. It’s fine with me.” 

Sejun looked a little uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. It was a slip of the tongue.” 

“No, I liked hearing it.” Stell held his gaze. “It sounded good.” 

Sejun poked at his meat, then smiled a little. “Stell.” 

Stell smiled back. “Sounds good.” 

When they finally exited the store, Stell wasn’t sure what they’d talked about all throughout the meal, only that there hadn’t been a single awkward moment. Sejun was delightful company. He would be, judging from the amount of times that Ken hung out with him.

He couldn’t remember if he had ever been with Sejun like this before, just eating and chatting and occasionally sharing a joke or making a snide comment. And it was maddening - positively maddening to know that he had missed out on this for so many years.

The more he thought about it, the more he became depressed at the thought of having to leave Sejun for three months. 

Sejun was already walking ahead of him, past the various other food stores down to the car park, when Stell caught hold of his wrist. Sejun halted and swung round to stare at him, too stunned to pull back. 

“I’m sorry Sejun,” Stell said, and he had never been more sincere. “I’m sorry that we didn’t make it here the last time. I’m sorry if I made you upset because of it. I’m really happy that you came out with me today to have lunch before the tour started.” 

“It’s fine Stell,” said Sejun gently. “It’s all in the past. Don’t dwell on it anymore, just remember that we had a good time just now, and enjoy your musical.” 

Unconsciously, Stell tightened his hold on Sejun’s arm. “Since it’ll be three months… and we won’t really see each other during that period…” 

Sejun waited, his eyes steady on Stell’s as Stell swallowed visibly. “Will it be okay… will you be okay with it… if I call you sometimes?” 

“When you get Manilasick?” Sejun laughed a little, light-heartedly. 

Stell wasn’t letting him get away with it. “No,” he said firmly. “When I’m Sejunsick.” 

Sejun stopped laughing and looked at him for a long moment, trying to determine whether he was serious or not. Stell didn’t say anything. He's just looked back at him and let him draw his own conclusions. 

After what seemed forever, Sejun stepped back and nodded slightly. “If you want to.” 

It was the most that Stell could hope for, that tiny opening, a crack through the frozen love that had once been his. With a lightening of the heart, he thought that the musical tour wasn’t going to be as hard to get through as he’d initially thought it would be when he’d sat at the dining table with Sejun and their laughing, talking, made Stell miss him already.

Sejun: Starting out today aren’t you, voyager! May the weather be kind to you and collect some wonderful memories of the musical tour. All of us will be cheering for you back home. Good luck.

“Good morning Stell,” said their musical production assistant from the front seat, “I can see you in the rearview mirror and you look disgustingly happy.” 

“Is Stell in love?” his co-actor exclaimed. 

“Eh! Really!?” Stell's senior actress almost twisted her neck turning around to look at Stell’s apparently disgustingly happy face. 

Stell smiled at them, turned his face to the window, didn’t respond to their teasing. Missing him already.


	13. Lost String Chapter 13

Sejun leaned against the wall with his sunglasses shadowing his eyes, watching the busy Sunday crowd swirl past him. At any other time he would feel annoyed at having to wait, but on this occasion, as on many others before, he simply felt resigned. The sky would have to collapse into the sea, he reasoned, before he didn’t have to wait. 

A group of chattering schoolgirls on their day out passed by him and shrieked with laughter simultaneously at an apparently hilarious joke. 

Sejun winced a little. That was one of the laws of nature that he could not understand - why girls in puberty had to travel in packs and scream when they laughed. Couldn’t they hear themselves? Or had their eardrums already become immune to their laughter due to constant bombardment of unearthly decibels? 

Sejun knew he would never be able to figure out the answer, and so when they thankfully disappeared from sight, he put them out of his mind and idly observed the rest of the people hurrying about in their Sunday rush. 

The city was hectic at the best of times; today was probably the worst. Sejun didn’t really like crowds. There was nothing he liked better than lying on his couch with his very expensive stereo set turned on to slightly higher than average levels while thumbing through a critically acclaimed book and sipping at his mother’s homemade lemon or any fruit juice. 

He had a sneaky suspicion that that shouldn’t be an idol’s favourite activity, but there it was. Unglamourous and boring John Paulo Nase. He gave a mental shrug at himself and forgot his reverie the next minute as a couple specializing in PDA took up a little space beside him. 

The girl giggled slightly and brushed her nose against her boyfriend’s, he reciprocated by hooking his arms around her waist and biting her ear. They then proceeded to rub against each other in a way that would be decent only for the bedroom. Sejun blinked a little and wondered if he should move somewhere else to give them more private space. 

If there was anything he hated, it was lovey dovey couples who had a tendency towards PDA. Apart from the awkwardness of having to stare at two people who obviously wanted a room to themselves and as such, displayed that desire to the rest of the world, seeing them reminded him of things that he didn’t want to remember. 

Sejun prided himself on his ability to forget, but one couldn’t forget all the time. A couple of scantily clad girls walked past him and threw him suggestive glances coupled with blindingly seductive smiles. Sejun returned the smile, observed them through his sunglasses but didn’t make any other move.

They were both stunning; long-limbed and fashionable with outrageously high heels and styled hair, and they walked with their knees knocking slightly against each other. He knew that many guys found that a tremendous turn on. He personally thought they looked rather deformed. And the kind of not looking for love, girls, he thought as they threw him one last look and, seeing his obvious disinterest, sauntered on with a pout of their pretty glossy lips. 

Sejun didn’t want to think about anything remotely to do with relationships. If one was to ask him now about his views on love, he would say he had no idea. Or perhaps he would even think it was funny. A lot of things were funny to him now, the things that hadn’t been funny at all last time. 

Justin said that he laughed a little too much nowadays. Sejun said Justin’s sense of humour wasn’t as finely-tuned as his. Laughter was easy and harmless. 

His phone rang loudly, obnoxiously, and the PDA guy beside him threw him an irritated look as the sound cut into their passionate necking. Sejun let the phone ring longer out of spite, and picked up only when the girl began to throw him a dirty look as well. 

Fine, throw me dirty looks. I’m not the one stuck up against the wall trying to show people that I’ve got someone all over me. I’m just standing here, minding my own business, when my phone decides to ring. I’m totally apologetic for interrupting your making-out spree. Practically on my knees begging for forgiveness, in fact. 

“Hey Sejun.” 

Sejun adjusted his phone against his ear. “Uhm Hi.” 

“Didn’t we agree that it was to be Stell?” 

“I forgot,” Sejun said simply. He watched in satisfaction as the couple suddenly realized that they were going to be late for something and hurriedly detached themselves to run off. 

“Free to talk now?” 

“Sure. I’m just waiting for someone.” 

“This from Sejun who hates waiting?” 

“It’s not like I have a choice,” said Sejun. “He’s always late and I have an irritating tendency to be somewhat on time.” 

Stell laughed. “That’s one of your good traits. Though on concert tours that tendency tends to go on a holiday.” 

“Nothing that happens on concert tours should be taken seriously. You’re not normal then.” 

“Nothing at all?” 

“No,” Sejun said decidedly. “You always behave weirdly when you’re on tour. You get too sensitive, or too assuming, maybe because the lack of sleep makes you pretty much subhuman.” 

“You have an incredibly bleak outlook on touring. Don’t forget I’m, according to your theory, subhuman right now.” 

“How’s the musical going?” 

“Pretty much the same as the last time we talked. Cameras everywhere for the behind the scenes documentary. Nonstop travelling. It’s great in a way but in other ways… sometimes I just want to go back to home.” 

“Manilasick? Whatever happened to I always want to travel? You’re betraying your interview spiels. I thought you were such a fervent loyalist.” 

“Well, travelling doesn’t have something,” said Stell, sounding cautious. “Someone.” 

Sejun watched the billboard screen opposite him flash an advertisement about sneakers. He didn’t reply. Didn’t want to. 

“Sejun?” 

“Enjoy yourself Stell. There’s only a month or two left to go. A lot of us want opportunities like that but don’t ever get them.” 

“I guess. I’ve enjoyed myself, of course. But it isn’t always easy, you know? Sometimes you don’t want to enjoy yourself.” 

“Uh huh…” 

“When I get back, let’s go for lunch together. Some swanky place.” 

Sejun pushed himself off the wall as he caught sight of someone in the crowd waving eagerly at him. “Hey, he’s here. Talk to you another time, alright? Have fun on your Sunday.” 

“Do we have to hang up so quickly?” Stell was plaintive. 

Sejun forced himself to laugh. “Goodbye Stell.” 

Sejun disconnected just as Ken broke free of the crowd and ran up to him with a big smile. “I’m not too late!” 

“No, of course not,” Sejun assured him, glancing down at his watch. “Just half an hour. That’s not too late at all.” 

Kem laughed breathlessly and punched him on the arm. “I woke up at least two hours earlier than usual just to meet you here on time, so you better be thankful.” 

Sejun shook his head. “Two hours early and yet half an hour late.” 

“It’s a bad habit. I can’t break it.” 

“Habits are excuses, Felip Jhon.” 

They grinned at each other and perhaps walking a little closer than they would have had half a year ago. They plunged into the surging crowd around them. In the few moments of wilderness before the green signal lit up, Ken’s hand found its way to Sejun’s and squeezed once. Tightly.

Stell wondered if he should feel so lonely. After all, he was with his dream acting team, and being with them made him happy. They became closer than close. They were the perfect company during long, grueling rehearsals; funny and understanding, even if his bestie co-actor Anthony had taken to calling out, “There’s Stell’s disgustingly happy face again!” whenever he got off the line with Sejun. 

Of course, nobody knew who exactly he was talking to. They probably wouldn’t have believed it even if he told them. Everybody knew he loved Anthony as much as he would a big brother but nobody thought very highly of his relationship compare with the rest of the SB19 members, much less Sejun, who could hardly be said to have featured prominently in Stell’s life up till now. 

That was, Stell thought, perhaps one of the reasons why he was so lonely. Nobody talked about Sejun; nobody even thought about him. Starless skies and empty bus stations meant nothing to them. He couldn’t even confide in someone here about how increasingly aloof Sejun was sounding on the phone. An aloofness that wasn’t hostility but rather a light, detached friendliness that was probably worse than hostility would have been. At least hostility meant that the person cared, even if it was in undesirable ways. One could do something with hostility. 

But nothing could be done about light, detached friendliness. It was neither here nor there. You couldn’t catch hold of it and squeeze something out of it. Sejun was a million miles away and Stell felt lonelier with every passing day that took Sejun even further from him.

He remembered the intensity in Sejun’s eyes once, two years ago, when he had woken up from his doze on the van to find Sejun watching him in the rearview mirror. It had only been a few seconds before Sejun hurriedly averted his gaze and bent his head over a book. But Stell couldn’t forget the expression in his eyes. 

It was as though Sejun’s entire life, his entire heart, was bound up completely in him. For the rest of the journey Stell wondered how long exactly had Sejun been looking at him. At that time it made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. 

Now he would give anything to see that intensity in Sejun’s eyes again or at least hear a note of it in his voice. But somewhere along the way over the past two years, that intensity had given way to a detached friendliness that Sejun probably used with everyone he met. 

“I think you should tell him,” said Josh when Stell called him out of desperation. 

“Tell him what?” 

“You know, about your feelings for him. You can’t expect him to understand just by placing a couple of phone calls to him every week. More likely he’s bound to think that you’re trying to win him back because you don’t like the thought of not having him around to love you anymore.” 

Stell was appalled. “I think he’s smarter than that.” 

“It has nothing to do with how smart he is, Stell. The fact is, you’ve been giving him crazily one-street signals ever since the time you met.” 

“Come again? Your metaphor is too profound.” 

“In other words, ever since you met, you’ve been showing him quite clearly that you don’t think of him as anything more than just a group member.” 

Stell winced, but continued listening. Josh sometimes had a way of hitting upon the truth. 

“He’s gotten used to that,” Josh went on, warming up in his analysis. “When he told you it was over, he said you didn’t have to be bothered by it anymore, right? It just shows that he thought his feelings were a hindrance to you. That’s probably why he didn’t do anything for so many years, just stayed in the distance. Probably why he didn’t contact you during the suspension too, even though you were dumb enough not to be able to call him.” 

“It would be highly appreciated if you could get to the point already.” 

“Fine, you ungrateful bastard. Remember that I’ve thought through this for you.” 

Stell groaned. “Okay, okay. I’m truly grateful from the bottom of my heart. Now please tell me what exactly you’re driving at.” 

“So,” Josh resumed, “now that it’s over, he doesn’t expect you to do anything because well, you didn’t do anything for four years. But guess what? Suddenly you start inviting him out and calling him every week. Obviously he’s got to be confused. You know Sejun, he isn’t exactly bright at catching on to people actually liking him.” 

“No, actually I think…” Stell thought of the group of students milling around Sejun, their affection and admiration for him and his casual acknowledgement of it so evident in their laughing faces and chatter. Once again he felt cruelly jealous towards them and he didn’t really know why. 

“Okay, I revise that. Sejun isn’t bright at catching on to people in our industry actually liking him. That includes you. So all of a sudden you’re putting up a show that you might actually think more of him than you’ve shown for years, and you haven’t even explained why you’re doing stuff like that, so well. What more can I say? You’ve got to be more aggressive if you want him. More straightforward, in any case.” 

“As I would like to but I would prefer not to do it over the phone.” 

“Well, it’s that or nothing,” said Josh shortly. “I ran into Justin the other day and had a short chat with him. Asked about Sejun for your benefit. Apparently Ken has been going out with him very frequently, so much so that Justin said he thought there might be something up between them. He might have been joking but I don’t think so. You’re somewhere in the country trying to hold on to him through vague phone calls while he’s being courted by someone else who’s not half as undecided as you. Give it some thought, my friend.” 

Stell didn’t want to believe Josh. Ken and Sejun… was ridiculous enough without having to swallow the theory that Sejun might be misinterpreting his calls as selfish actions to win back his unrequited love. It couldn’t be. 

But now, sitting on the bus on the way back to the hotel with Anthony sleeping peacefully beside him, he gazed at the headlights of the cars passing along outside and thought of the abrupt way in which Sejun often cut off their phone calls. It couldn’t be and yet it could. Without even realizing what he was doing, he pulled out his phone and dialed Sejun’s number. Ring. Ring. Ring ring. Riiiing. Riiiing ring ring. 

“…helloo.” 

“Hey, it’s me.” 

“Stell…” Sejun’s voice trailed off into a yawn. “It’s midnight and I’ve been studying the whole day.” 

“I just…” Stell swallowed. “I just wanted to talk.” 

“What?” Sejun asked tiredly. “What do you want to talk about, Stell?” 

Stell paused and tried to collect his thoughts. It all felt like too much effort and in the end he settled for a simple, “I don’t know.” 

“Then maybe we can hang up now?” 

“No! No, Sejun, I… I have something to ask you, really.” 

“What is it?” 

“About…” 

There was silence on the other end. Then Sejun sighed and a lot of rustling noises told Stell that he was turning over in bed. “About that cat of yours. Meeyaoweou.”

“What about him?” 

“I haven’t seen him in a long time.” 

“I think…” Sejun sounded like he was converging with sleep. “The last I know, he’s out travelling the world.” 

“Why would he do that? He’s staying with his owner, isn’t he?” 

“I don’t know. He didn’t give a reason. Maybe he just got tired of hanging around.” 

A long, loud yawn. 

“Stell, I’m really tired I have to sleep now… I’m going…” 

Gone.

The line disconnected and Stell leaned his head back on the headrest. If only, he thought, Meeyaoweou’s smug, furry face would appear around the seat now, he would pull the cat up onto his lap, even give him a welcome hug. But Meeyaoweou was as lost to him as everything else was. 

He closed his eyes and tried his hardest to keep his tears as soft as possible so that he would not wake Anthony.

“Sometimes I don’t understand you,” Justin complained. 

“What don’t you understand about me?” Sejun asked, pulling out an umbrella from the rack and deciding that it looked a little dirty compared to the one beside it. 

“They’re all the same Sejun.” 

“They’re not. That one had a spot on it.” 

“A spot won’t make a difference!” Justin was a bit agitated now. Sejun grinned at him and pulled out another umbrella. 

“I’ll choose one soon, I promise.” Sejun muttered. 

“So is this what you don’t understand about me?” Sejun asked five minutes later when they stood at the traffic light huddled under their umbrellas, shivering slightly in the cold wind. 

Justin sneezed. “What's that?!” 

“My fussy umbrella selection?” 

“Sej…!” Justin sneezed again and threw him a reproachful look. “Of course not!” 

“Then what?” Sejun asked. “You don’t just tell someone that you don’t understand them and then don’t offer an explanation.” 

“Well…” Justin was beginning to launch into the desired explanation when the green light lit up and they hurried across the road, hunching shoulders against the wind. 

Sejun pointed to the nearest cafe and they half flew towards it. 

“I… hate… rain,” Justin gasped. 

Sejun smiled, shaking the rain drops from his umbrella. “Believe me, so do I.” 

“It’s wet and cold and mean and nasty and…” 

“Just negative overall.” 

“Totally.” Justin swiped his arm free of droplets. They both ordered nice warming cups of coffee and sat down by the window, peering out at the rain. 

“Uhm, Sejun.” Justin wheezed. 

“What?” 

“The thing I don’t understand about you is Stell.” 

“Stell isn’t ‘about’ me!” Sejun laughed, shaking his head. 

Justin ignored him. “The thing is, he’s been calling you quite regularly, hasn’t he? I don’t understand what you feel about it.” 

Sejun stared at him. “Nothing much.” 

“Nothing much? But he’s obviously trying to win you back! Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, Stell trying to win you?” 

“No!” Sejun snapped but winced when Justin jolted at the sharpness of his tone. He rubbed his head in apology. “I’m sorry for snapping. But no, Jah, I used to want it but not anymore. Not now.” 

Justin tried not to sound as puzzled as he felt. “Why not now?” 

“Because…” Sejun paused, tapping his finger against the table slowly and rhythmically. “It seems pretty late, doesn’t it?” 

“Late… but the point is that at least he’s trying now.” 

“I don’t know.” Sejun gave up tapping and shrugged in a would-be nonchalant way. “Maybe I’ve just become tired of the whole thing. Or maybe it doesn’t seem very real to me. Either way, it’s not what I want, truly. I just want us to get along so that being stuck together for hours during training or photo-taking won’t be too awkward.”

“But all your memories with him? Didn’t you have quite a lot? You used to talk about them sometimes. Lying beside him by that hotel swimming pool… and going out with him on the night of our agency holiday party…” 

Sejun gave a little exaggerated sigh. “They’re all past. Ancient history. Deep in the annals of Stupidity, never to be dragged up again. I can’t imagine how I placed such great store by them last time, they weren’t even significant things.” 

“I don’t understand you.” 

“It’s simple to understand, really. They’re all in the past. There’s no need to think about them anymore. Nothing that happens now can change them.” 

Justin rubbed his nose uncertainly, almost foolishly. “I feel like you’re throwing something away, Sejun…” 

“Throwing something away, huh?” Sejun mulled over it, then smiled. A smile that Justin did not like in the least because it had nothing of mirth in it. “It’s okay. At least it doesn’t make me sad.” 

“But…” Justin couldn’t argue with that. It was true, Sejun didn’t seem sad anymore. “Even if you’re not sad…” 

“God, how it used to hurt!” Sejun cut him off, laughing. “How funny to think of it now, getting all upset and crying in bed because I couldn’t see him. What a pathetic arse. Loving someone totally screws with one’s mind. But now I’m out of it, I wouldn’t even notice that he’s not around. You should be happy for me, Justin~ It was a huge step to take and I took it and I’m over it now, onto smaller and less difficult steps.” 

Justin didn’t know what to say. It all seemed so wrong. 

“Pretty soon, there won’t even be any steps left,” Sejun mused. He took a sip of his coffee and grinned. “Hmmm.. I think hot coffee is heaven when you’re drinking it in the middle of a storm.” 

“I think you should give him another chance, Sejun.” 

“Why?” 

“Because it’s your chance at happiness.” 

“There are several chances, Jah,” said Sejun lightly. “Thousands of chances at happiness. I think I’ve already exhausted this one. It didn’t bring me much happiness, remember? It’s time to hunt out other chances.” 

Sejun smiled again. “Remember to tell me if you see one floating by. Preferably long-haired, intelligent and doesn’t use half a million emoticons in her text messages.” 

Justin tightly wrapped his fingers around the cup and soaked in its warmth. His lips were pressed tightly together. “As you wish.” 

“I do wish.” He shrugged and looked out of the window at the few straggling, drenched pedestrians outside. 

Sejun was impossible to read during times like this. 

Sejun was drunk.  
Stell could hear it. 

“Sejun, call a cab and go home… Or better still, call Justin. Ask him to drive you home. For goodness’ sake ask someone to send you home.” 

“Stell!” Sejun exclaimed, half-laughing. “The chance at happiness. Stell, the chance at happiness. What bullshit.” 

Stell heard someone else laughing not too far from Sejun and he clenched his fists in worry. Who the hell was there with him? 

“Sejun, I’ll be back in Manila tomorrow morning and I don’t want to see you on the twitter newsfeed lying wasted on the ground robbed of your wallet and drooling like a maniac. So can you please get yourself together to call a cab…” 

“Haha! He says call a CAB,” Sejun said. 

“Steeeeel~.” 

Stell could hear the other voice distinctly now and he was almost struck dumb. 

“Don’t worry! Sejun’s in my room with me!” 

“Ken?” 

“I think I should hang up now,” said Sejun ominously. 

“No wait, Sejun…” 

“WHY?” Sejun practically yelled down the line.

And Stell started so violently that his co-actor threw him a concerned look from the other side of the hotel room. 

“Why can’t I hang up? Why do you always want to talk to me?” 

“Steeell, you’re making Sejun cry!” Ken’s voice floated in. 

“Wait, Sejun. I want to talk to you because I want to hear your voice. It makes me happy to talk to you. And I want…” Stell fumbled over his words. “I want to talk to you for as long as possible.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I love you…” 

There was a short silence broken by little sympathetic-sounding noises from Ken. 

“Sejun, please listen to me,” Stell said, his voice trembling. 

“No,” said Sejun, sounding strangely muffled. “You don’t. I don’t know what you want or how you’re feeling but I just want you to let me be. Let me be…” 

“I can’t let you go… I’m sorry for everything I’ve done but Sejun…” Stell had the distinct feeling that this was not the time when he should be explaining himself. Definitely not when Sejun and Ken were drunk in a room together. And obviously not in any mood to listen to him. 

But he couldn’t stop himself. “I really want to start over with you again. I’ve realized so many things and I know that I love you and I need you to love me back…” 

“Don’t say that, Stell. Don’t make me do that. And don’t lie…” Sejun trailed off, then came back again. “Don’t make me do that. Let’s just be. It’s all over. Let it be.” 

The phone was grabbed from him and Stell had to suppress a cry at the back of his throat. 

“Stell.” Ken’s voice came over the line. “Don’t make Sejun cry anymore? I’m hanging up now.” 

Ken disconnected the call and Stell collapsed onto the bed, shaking. 

And even though Anthony rushed over and tried to put his arms around him, all he could think of was Sejun and Ken alone together and Sejun crying and saying let it be... and don’t lie.. and don’t make me do that... and.. 

Stell didn’t know what to do anymore except lean his head against the mattress and tear at the sheets with his fingers. 

It's over,  
let it be,  
don’t make me do that.


	14. Lost String Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've already drafted my last chapters~ this will be ending with 16chapters (⌒‐⌒)♡ As always, thank you for reading and commenting!

The light pierced onto Sejun’s eyelids and he stirred, making a small dissatisfied sound at the back of his throat. 

Sunlight didn’t care. 

There was a crack in the curtains and sunlight used it to full effect, beaming first onto the blankets rumpled over Sejun’s legs and waist and moving up to his arms thrown defiantly over his face. 

Even then sunlight stayed on the lower exposed part of his face, teasing his nose and mouth until Sejun groaned again and squeezed open an eye. 

This was so not what he needed right now; unbearably brightband warm morning sunshine, a splitting headache, and a stomach that rumbled as though he hadn’t eaten in about ten years. Actually, come to think of it, that was pretty true. He still didn’t feel like eating anyway. 

Sejun turned over in bed and found himself staring straight down at Ken passed out stomach-down on the floor, one arm providing cushion for his head. A myriad of bottles and cans lay strewn all around him and his shirt had ridden up, exposing a smooth expanse of brown skin. 

Ken, the main dancer boy of SB19 that could send girls into hysterics with a single smile, looked like a street bum. 

He would have liked to close his eyes and woo sleep for a couple more hours, but Sejun wasn’t the type who could go back to sleep once he’d woken up. He sat up in bed and took stock of his surroundings; a door in a corner that looked like it led to a bathroom, his bag discarded by Ken’s low bookshelf, his phone chucked on the other end of the bed half-hidden by creases in the blanket. 

He remembered now. 

Ken had given him back his phone after hanging up and he had thrown it as far as he could. It seemed as though he’d been pretty feeble last night if the farthest the phone had gotten was to the other end of the bed. 

Holding his head as it somehow got too heavy for his neck, Sejun stepped over Ken and staggered over to the door to find the bathroom behind it. He fell in thankfully and turned on the tap to full blast. 

It was a while before he felt brave enough to walk out, his mind was weird and unfocused as though there were many levels of thinking hidden within its folds and he’d only gotten as far as level one, which told him that he’d drunk far too much the night before and really needed to stay in bed until all lasting effects of alcohol were gone. 

He knew there were several other thoughts embedded in the other levels. He didn’t want to think about them yet. Ken was sitting against the bed yawning, when he peeked out. 

“Morning,” Ken said. 

“Morning,” Sejun replied. 

“Feeling better?” 

“Not really. I feel like a bulldozer just ran over my head.” 

Ken grimaced, gazing at the bottles lying around him. “I think I can see why.” 

Sejun fell back onto the bed and reached out to retrieve his phone. “I should go home.” 

“You don’t look like you’re fit to go anywhere right now.” Ken leaned in to inspect his face. “I don’t think you should be allowed onto public transport when looking like that.” 

“Ken, what are you mean?” 

“I’m saying,” said Ken patiently, “that you look bad enough to scare kids.” 

Sejun tried to draw his eyebrows together in a frown. “Let them be scared then.” 

“Seriously Sejun?” Ken was interrupted by a huge yawn. “I feel… like… crap.” 

Sejun open his phone and didn’t feel like talking anymore. Five missed calls, four messages. Had he really slept through all of that? He opened his messaging app and checked the missed calls list and scowled at it:

Stell Ajero, 2:15am  
Mama, 2:45am  
Stell Ajero, 3:03am  
Stell Ajero, 3:30am  
Stell Ajero, 4:12am 

Uggh! Sejun could feel his mind congesting into one single level and his headache was beginning to get really, really bad. What had Stell said the previous night? Something about… oh, god! Don’t think. 

Stell:  
I’m sorry, Sejun. I’ve been the blindest idiot you could ever think of, and I know I don’t deserve to ask for anything. But for now, I want to ask you to listen to me. Just listen. I’m so sorry. 

Sejun deleted the message. 

Stell:  
I’ll be back in Manila by 8am tomorrow. Can we meet up in the afternoon? I’ll give you a call. 

“Messages?” Ken lifted himself on his arms and crawled onto the bed to flop down beside Sejun. 

Sejun deleted the message. He wasn’t ready to talk yet. 

Mama:  
It’s late. When are you coming back? The soup’s being kept warm for you. 

Damn it. 

Stell:  
Let’s stop hurting ourselves.

“Hurting ourselves?!” Sejun pinched his eyes shut, then cursed roundly and threw his phone in the corner where it bounced against the bookshelf and would have broken if only it wasn’t so sturdy. 

Damn smartphones. 

“What the fuck do you want?” he yelled. 

Ken rubbed his shoulder soothingly. “Sejun, I know you’re upset but it’s…” he squinted at the digital clock. “It’s 7:25 and my sister is outside.” 

“I’m sorry.” Sejun wanted to bury his face in the blankets and never come out. 

Ken reached out and pulled him tight against his chest and for a minute Sejun thought of drawing back, because this was Ken and the gesture in itself seemed way too intimate even taking into consideration how quickly their relationship had developed over the past few months.

But in the end he couldn’t find the effort to move. Ken shifted slightly, adjusting his arms more comfortably around Sejun’s shoulders, and it felt good. It felt so good. And just like that, Sejun was crying, shaking as he tried to muffle his sobs into Ken’s chest. 

Ken only held him tighter and stroked his hair. He couldn’t hope to understand Sejun’s feelings and so he didn’t try to form comforting words. Simply held him tight and waited until he was ready to talk. 

“I don’t want to go through all this again.” A murmur, barely above a whisper. Sejun’s breath shook as he sighed. 

“You don’t have to.” 

“It used to be so bad…” Sejun closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Ken’s shoulder. “I just want to move on and forget everything. I want to be let alone. I don’t know why he keeps trying to pull at me.” 

“You don’t believe him yet? When he said he loves you?” 

“How can I believe it?” Sejun’s cheeks were wet and sticky and when Ken pressed a hand on his tears, he reached up and covered Ken’s hand with his. “Tell me, how can I believe it?” 

Ken didn’t know, he wasn’t sure if he believed it himself, either. Vaguely, he thought he recalled Stell mentioning something about loving someone who once loved you. But at that moment Sejun looked up at him, eyes red and swollen, and he forgot everything except the need to kiss his eyelids. 

Sejun let out a breath and shivered. “This isn’t what I want now,” he said softly when Ken drew back. 

“I know… I’m not asking you for it, Sejun.” 

“Can we just be… as we are… without having to clarify anything?” 

“Yes…” 

“At least until I’ve sorted myself out.” Sejun swallowed and Ken suddenly felt his breath catch in his throat.

Ken couldn’t remember the last time he felt such an intense desire to hold and protect someone. 

“I don’t understand what’s going on and I wish I didn’t have to think about all this again… I don’t want to… but I should listen to what he wants to say and…” he paused. “Maybe after that, we can officially put this whole affair to an end.” 

“But if he really loves you…?” Ken murmured, though at this point he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer. Sejun remained silent. He didn’t want to consider that possibility. 

A tear reached Ken’s thumb and rolled slowly over his nail. Ken watched the little wet path it left behind, glistening in the muted sunlight, and suddenly he leaned forward and kissed Sejun’s cheek, Sejun’s nose, Sejun’s lips. It took him a few moments to realize that Sejun wasn’t stopping him. 

Stell didn’t have to look up to recognize those footsteps. Quick at first, then an abrupt halt, then slow and unsure… he’d been hearing those various footsteps in his head for the past two hours, over and over, so clearly that each time he looked up, only to see an empty corridor and know that his imagination had sickeningly overtaken his mind. 

This time he didn’t look up, waiting for the footsteps to fade away, and it was a shock when Sejun’s voice said, “Stell?” 

Stell raised his head to see Sejun standing, hands jammed into his pockets. He looked as though he was in some sort of surreal nightmare. 

“What are you doing here?” 

Stell pushed himself up, wincing slightly at the blood rushing back into his legs. 

“Waiting for you.” 

Sejun looked at him once, closely, then turned his head to stare over the railings at the car park below. 

“After such a long tour… you didn’t have to wait for me.” 

“No, I had to.” Stell cleared his voice. “You didn’t pick up any of my calls and I was worried…” 

“I was sleeping. Of course I wouldn’t pick up any calls.” 

They fell silent. Stell leaned against the wall and randomly pulled a thread in his shirt. Sejun continued staring at a landscape that he couldn’t see. 

“If you could just listen to me, Sejun. From beginning to the end.” 

“Alright.” Sejun turned his head and Stell looked at his eyes… dark and unreadable, outwardly as calm as a lake under a still morning sky. “I’ll listen to you once.” 

“If after that you tell me to get lost, or to give up…” Stell couldn’t go on. He wasn’t sure if he could carry out any promise he might make. 

Sejun looked past him to the door. The sunlight made the ends of his hair seem translucent and his lips were unnaturally red. Stell found himself staring at those lips… He couldn’t remember Sejun’s lips ever being so red before. Red… almost bruised. Then he saw a mark on Sejun’s neck, standing out clearly against the paleness of his skin. 

Stell tried to breathe. To hold himself together. “I love you so much Sejun.” He had never meant it more. 

Sejun focused his blank stare on Stell. “Why now?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“It’s been so long…” Sejun sighed heavily and rubbed his head. “Everything has changed now. Even if what you say is true… it may not mean anything anymore. Everything… is changed.” 

Stell pushed back the rising panic inside him. Nothing would be changed if he didn’t let it be. There was a mist in Sejun’s eyes that told him all wasn’t lost yet. Regardless of what had happened last night – how that mark had come to be there on his neck – all of it didn’t matter if he didn’t focus on it. 

“Would you give me a chance that what I say might be true?” 

“Maybe…” 

“Then let me say it again. I love you John Paulo.” 

“Then make me believe it.” 

Sejun pulled out his keys and unlocked his door. “Make me believe it, Stell.” 

He entered his apartment and turned back to look at Stell who continued standing outside, unmoving. They held each other’s eyes for a long time. Sejun thought he remembered the sound of Stell’s soft, regular breaths beside him on that night so long ago when they had lain together by the swimming pool and he had been happy just being with Stell. 

Clear glimpses of life, captured moments. Late night revelers on one holiday night, pedestrians straggling by on the pavements singing and laughing, Stell saying that he’d broken up with Mary. Stell’s smile when they had reunited at the agency's christmas party; that small smile which had been directed specially at him - Continue loving me, Sejun. I will continue loving you, Stell. 

He looked at Stell now, unshaven and exhausted, with something in his eyes that Sejun had never seen before. How had they come to this point? After such a long, tiring journey through so many lands… How had they wound up here, standing looking at each other, their roles so bizarrely reversed? 

He thought of the unrequited community, of his heart that had been lost nearly five years ago, of Meeyaoweou’s unwavering love for his owner, of the softness of Stell’s cheek when he’d kissed him with the sound of rain against the window, of savory delicacy at a little restaurant and seeing Stell’s eyes crinkle with laughter. Of Stell, even when he closed his mind and heart to it and tried to laugh it off. Always of Stell. 

And so he stepped back without a word, and just as silently Stell picked up his bag and walked past him into the apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm near to going back to work.. as of this chapter, I'm just waiting for exact day of reporting again ヘ(゜ο°;)ノI hope I could still do au's after this (･ω･｀人)
> 
> (*´∀｀*) sighs, being an adult is tough ne? I'll resume being a fangirl by 8pm on weekdays ahaha
> 
> Please let us all be safe! Still scared but let's do this for the economy, for our families, ourselves and the SB19 boys esp Stelljun lol. (*≧з≦)♡


	15. Lost String Chapter 15

Their breathing had been laboured,  
their kissing wordless.  
If this was passion, Sejun thought as he strained against Ken, then maybe he wanted more of it. 

He knew that he would not be able to forget the taste of Ken’s mouth, the bitterness of last night’s beer mingling with some elusive sweetness, the feel of his lips against his cheek, his jaw, and now on his neck. It was heady, senseless. He couldn’t understand what was happening, but it felt good. It felt like something that he’d been waiting for all this while. 

Ken sucked at his skin, and Sejun barely had time to figure out what exactly was happening before he suddenly heard Stell’s voice in his head. The slightly rough but piercing pitch of Stell’s voice, half-broken as it had been mere hours before, trying to find its way around words. “Because I love you.” 

Then there was a sharp, jolting pain on the skin between his neck and shoulder, god it hurt, and Sejun turned his eyes down to see Ken’s head nestled on his shoulder. Ken. And suddenly he was dry, so dry that he felt like crying out. 

This wasn’t passion, he thought as he pushed Ken gently away and rolled to the other side of the bed, curling up against the pillows, trying to hold back the tears of confusion and frustration. 

This wasn’t passion, it wasn’t… 

“Sejun.” 

“I can’t. I’m so sorry.” 

“I'm sorry, I don’t… know what I’m doing.” 

He could feel Ken inching closer to him, but he didn’t want Ken to touch him, not anymore, not in that way. And then Ken laid down beside him, close but not too close, and put a hand on his hip and it was all right.

Perhaps this was how they could be; just all right, together, for always. 

“You really love him Sejun?” Ken’s voice was heavy. 

“I did. More than I ever imagined…” 

A silence settled between them.  
A silence full of shapes and sizes,  
thick with words that couldn’t be formed. 

Outside, they could hear Ken’s sister greeting her cousin good morning.

A couple of birds cried out in their voices and flapped past the window. Ken sighed; Sejun could feel the ends of his breath touching the nape of his neck. 

“Tell me to let go, Sejun.” 

Sejun fisted the corner of a pillow and turned his head a little. “What?” 

“For weeks now I’ve been thinking that maybe… just maybe… I could do it. Maybe I could be with you, and we could try – finding something together. Maybe it was possible.” 

Sejun knew those words. They were familiar. He’d heard them in his heart for four years, deep inside, though they never dared to come out. He closed his eyes; didn’t want to know that Ken could be susceptible to that kind of pain, too. 

“But now…” 

Were words really that long? Why did they take such a long, difficult time to express what a person felt? 

“I don’t think it’s possible. It has never been. But I can’t tell myself to let go now – I know I won’t be able to. I need to hear it from you, Sejun…” 

There was another pause. 

“Tell me to let you go.” 

He knew how it had to hurt. Once he had said the same thing to Stell, only using different words, just three words that had held both hope and resignation. And Stell had given his response. I don’t like you. I don’t think I ever will. Stell had given him the benefit of honesty. 

Sejun forced himself to open his eyes, to turn over so that he could see Ken’s face. Ken looked back at him, lips slightly parted and eyes dim with unshed tears, waiting. 

Sejun took a deep breath. “Let me go.” 

This time it was Ken’s turn to close his eyes and bend his head towards himself, but he nodded. 

In that instant, the romance that had begun to transpire between them; the meaningful smiles, the indirect words within words, the brief touches, the passion, all melted away into moments that were past.

“What exactly is between you and Stell now, Sejun?” 

“I don’t know. Must I be required to explain it?” 

“Well, you two seem a lot more friendly than you were before. As though you might very nearly be friends.” 

“Maybe we might be. Maybe that’s better than anything else we might have wanted.” 

“I don’t believe that. Now that you say that you and Ken are friends too… and Stell has said again and again that he loves you, there’s nothing holding you back, right? Don’t waste the feelings you have for him.” 

“If I have to say it…” 

“What?” 

“There’s something holding me back. I don’t know what it is.But I can’t just throw things to the wind and plunge in with him now. Maybe it’s been too long, or I’ve changed too much.” 

“Don’t you believe yet that he really does love you?” 

“I told him I’d think about it. That maybe one day I’d be able to believe it.” 

“Oh, all these maybes!” 

“There are lots of maybes in life, Jah. We couldn’t do without them.” 

“Yes, but…” 

“Let’s leave it at maybe for now.” 

Stell knew the importance of endings. 

In life, beginnings are important;  
but the endings were what counted. 

If you told someone a story, that someone would always want to know, “So was there a happy ending?” 

In the world of movies, everyone knew how Casablanca had ended, but not many remembered how it had begun, nor even how it had developed to the ending. 

Endings were everything. If the ending wasn’t happy, or wasn’t to that person’s liking, chances were that the person wouldn’t like the story either. Even if he had been enthralled with it right up to the point of the ending. 

Stell wished he could tell anyone who asked about him and Sejun that the ending was happy. But he couldn’t. It would be a lie. 

To him, a happy ending would be a satisfying conclusion to the day that he had finally revealed to Sejun how he had felt all along. Perhaps they would have hugged to make up for all the misunderstandings of years past, and even made promises of a shared future. 

But they hadn’t. 

“Give me time.” 

Sejun had said after listening to Stell’s stumbled account of how he had fallen in love with him during the long days of the suspension but hadn’t been decisive enough to pursue that love. 

How things had gone wrong on the night of the their company party; how badly he had felt when Sejun had kissed him goodbye; how unhappy he had been when he heard of Sejun’s growing romance with Ken; how he was trying now to make things right between them, to prove that he really wanted to make a go of it. 

Sejun had listened to everything, patiently and calmly, and Stell had curled his fingers around his cup of tea and felt the heat on the surface sting against his skin. 

Then Sejun had looked at him, directly and without equivocation, and said, “Give me time.” 

“I don’t want to force you if… if this isn’t what you want.” 

“I’m trying to figure out what I want,” Sejun said quietly. “I think… I have to get past myself first.” 

Stell nodded. If this was what Sejun could give him, he would accept it. “I understand. I’ll wait for you…” 

“I’ll think about it,” said Sejun. 

When he had excused himself and they were standing at the doorway, Stell slipping on his shoes and trying to think of something to say that would have at least some sort of conclusive value in it, Sejun interrupted the silence.

He suddenly said, “Don’t wait too long for me.” 

Stell looked up, startled, to encounter a small smile on Sejun’s face that somehow made him want to smile back. 

“Don’t wait too long for me, Stell!” Sejun said again. “If you find someone else… some wonderful girl that you’ve been dreaming about all your life, don’t hang around waiting for me!” 

“I think I’ll wait,” said Stell. “Because there won’t be any wonderful girls. Not anymore.” 

He had gone away then, and Sejun stood at the door to wave him goodbye. 

Since then he had not broached the subject, and neither had Sejun. But it remained as something between them. 

Stell knew that it was better than nothing; that even if it wasn’t a happy ending, not by half, it was a very little something that could be worked on. It was a something that made Sejun’s smiles come more readily and openly now, that was bringing a newfound confidence to his conversations and a brightness to his face. 

So this was what love felt like, Stell thought. Not full of glitter or champagne or candlelight dinners or romantic love songs sung outside windows, but a warm, steady glow blossoming in one’s heart. 

A feeling of wanting to care for another person, of joy in watching that person bask in your love, of knowing that there was someone in this world whom your heart could come back to. 

“Love?” Stell's sister-in-law asked when Stell mentioned it. 

“Why, love is easy to understand. It’s like completely being yourself when you’re with the one you love. You feel as though you don’t have to pretend at all, that you don’t have to hide anything, you can just be yourself.” 

But humans always had something to hide, whether or not they loved that someone in particular. 

“Well, generally being yourself. You know what I mean. Don’t put me on the spot!” her voice turned a little whiny, so Stell decided not to pursue the matter. 

When he talked about it to his brother, his Kuya sidled up to him and whispered naughty things in his ear. Stell tried not to wince. “That’s not love, you fat idiot, that’s lust.” 

“Well, what’s the difference?” the older said bluntly, and Stell hoped very much that he would be able to tell the difference soon. 

“Love, right,” said his mother when he was back for the weekend, enjoying the atmosphere of home and hanging around his mother in the kitchen where she had laboured so many years for their big family, “love takes courage. It’s easy falling in love, but it takes courage to continue loving someone.” 

“Courage, huh,” Stell murmured. 

“But when you do,” said his mom, tapping his arm with her ladle to tell him to get out of her way, “when you find that you have that courage to continue loving someone for the rest of your life, that’s when you know that your home is with that person.” 

Stell didn’t know if their answers were correct, but he thought that maybe they were all somewhat right, that love comprised of a little of all of them, like ingredients in a dish. But then he had never been too much of a philosophical person and so he couldn’t figure it out really.

All he knew was that when he watched Sejun laughing over some joke with Josh or patiently enduring their staff choreographer’s indecisiveness or confiding secrets to Justin or even smiling and jamming with Ken, just watching him was bliss, was understanding, was perhaps a bit of what lasting love meant. 

And for that, he was contented to wait until he could get his happy ending. 

It came sooner than Stell thought. And in a way that he had not expected. 

The day before they were due to perform their new single, Alab, they were relaxing for a few moments after practice in their dressing room before heading home. 

Ken, stretched out on the sofa, tucked his arms behind his head and hummed the tune of Best Part. 

Every so often Sejun, comfortably seated in the beanbag with his legs drawn up, glanced over and hummed along with him and they would smile, a smile that warmed Stell’s heart, because he could see that their affection for each other had taken a whole new form and him loving Sejun didn’t mean alienating Ken. They had gotten past it; they were more mature than he could ever hope to be. 

“Don’t pull my hair too hard tomorrow, Stell!” Justin said from where he was playing some complicated hand clapping game with Josh. 

“You kneeling in front of me just calls for your hair to be pulled as hard as possible,” Stell replied. 

“Stell always likes to be sadistic,” Ken grinned.

“I’m excited about performing the song!” Justin enthused. 

“I think it’s going to be so great!” Sejun added.

“I like it too!” Josh chipped in. “It’s very fun to sing, no?” 

“I think it’s a great song too.” 

Accordingly, everyone turned towards the door to see where the new voice had come from. 

“Mary!” Josh exclaimed. 

“Yo, Mary!” Ken greeted, smiling all over his face. 

Mary came into the dressing room looking a little shy. Stell wanted to laugh at her even as he understood the shyness. 

“Hello, guys. I just ended a meeting with a couple of show organizers so I thought I’d drop by to congratulate you on your new single. I hope I’m not disturbing.” 

“Of course not, it’s great to see you!” Josh said, ushering her into a seat. “Do you want tea? Or soft drinks?” 

“Ever the host,” Mary laughed, growing more comfortable as Josh rushed to ready a drink for her and even Ken sat up to give him a welcoming smile. 

Sejun moved his beanbag closer to the couch to give Mary more space. 

“Hey sweetie,” Mary said, smiling at Sejun who immediately returned it. 

Justin’s brow furrowed as he thought he detected a bit of strain in Sejun’s face. 

“How have you been?” said Sejun. 

“I’m alright… just drifting along, waiting for things to happen…” Mary didn’t want to talk about herself. “And you look like you’ve been doing great. You look so much better than you did a year ago!” 

“The miracles of a good haircut,” Josh interjected, grinning fondly at Sejun. 

“Much that you would know about it,” Sejun retorted. 

Mary glanced at Stell and leaned down closer to Sejun. “It’s Stell, isn’t it?” 

Sejun blinked uncomprehendingly. “What?” 

“Stell’s love, of course!” Mary said teasingly. “His love is making you look so much better!” 

Sejun began to blush. “What on earth are you talking about?!” 

Justin dropped the Styrofoam cup onto the floor and hopped about nervously. Josh, too taken aback by Mary’s abrupt statement, exchanged a confused look. Ken got off his couch and walked towards the door where he stood with his hands in his pockets, observing Sejun’s face. 

Stell just stared open-mouthed at Mary, suddenly realizing the real reason why Mary had dropped in. 

Mary laughed, put her arm around Sejun then lowered her voice purposefully. “Stell really loves you, you know. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and I really want the two of you to come to some sort of conclusion. Stell’s always thinking about you… even that night when I was on the verge of dying, he left me to go to you. Don’t let go of him now!” 

“That night?” Sejun questioned almost faintly. 

Mary stared for a moment. “Yeah, that night. You guys were supposed to go for some meal together in Cavite? He went to meet you at around eleven o’ clock… didn’t you know? When I called him he said that he saw you there.” 

Sejun blinked once, twice, then understood. “You were there…” He turned to look at Stell. “Why didn’t you tell me you were there?” 

Mary, too, looked up at Stell. “Stell, didn’t you… you didn’t tell him…?” 

Stell swallowed, looking into Sejun’s eyes. “I didn’t want you to know how cowardly…” 

“You were there,” Sejun said again. 

“I was very late.” 

“But you were there.” Sejun’s voice broke.  
“You idiot, you idiot, you idiot, you were there.” 

“I was,” said Stell.

And suddenly Sejun was breaking down into such a storm of crying that Josh and Ken instantly dragged everyone else out of the room. But neither Stell nor Sejun noticed because Stell’s arms were tight around Sejun and they were holding each other as Sejun clutched at Stell and shook with his sobs. 

“Why didn’t… you… tell me?” 

“I’m sorry that I was late Sejun,” Stell whispered, trying to steady his voice long enough to speak coherently. “I’m so sorry that I was late.” 

“Oh god, Stell.” 

“I love you.” 

“You idiot.” Sejun looked up, tears streaking his face, and Stell wiped them away with his thumb and kissed his cheek. 

“I love you Sejun.” 

“Then forgive me,” Sejun said, nestling closer. “Forgive me and stay with me.” 

“I couldn’t leave…” 

“I love you Stell. I have… for so long.” 

And then Stell was crying as well, tears that didn’t hurt, and he wrapped his arms around Sejun and kissed his shoulder and knew that this was it.

This was happiness,  
and forgiveness,  
and love,  
and Sejun.

There would always be nobody but Sejun.

Outside the door, a travel-weary cat smirked and padded quietly away.

Slightly over one year ago Stell turned over in bed, opened his eyes and stared. He wasn’t sure if he should believe what he was seeing, or whether it was merely a trick of the light, so he continued staring in silence. 

If sunlight could be orange, he thought, and furry, and with whiskers into the bargain, then it was very possible that it was merely a trick of the light. 

The cat sitting on his bed calmly lifted a paw and rubbed its head. It looked perfectly comfortable being there, as though it was normal for strange cats to sit on people’s beds. 

Then it yawned a little. 

“Uh,” said Stell. 

The cat looked at him out of green eyes. “Good morning,” it said. 

Stell gulped. Maybe it was not only a trick of light, but also a trick of sound, because cats did not appear on beds for no reason at all, and cats did not talk in his language. 

“You and I are old acquaintances,” said the cat. “I am actually rather offended that you haven’t recognized me yet.” “

"Am I, uh…” Stell tried to put his thoughts together in one coherent whole. “Am I supposed to know you?” 

The cat swished its tail slowly back and forth, as though considering the question. “Yes,” it said finally. 

“You are…” 

“Ugh.. You named me Meeyaoweou.” 

Stell gulped again. Maybe this was a trick of the mind, too, because Meeyaoweou was in a story and he wasn’t even a real cat! And phantom cats did not appear in people’s rooms without reason, even if it was very likely that they could speak the human language. 

“I’m not here without reason,” said the cat, whom Stell personally thought looked a little too fluffy and cute to be Meeyaoweou. 

“Why are you here then?” Stell asked, and since he was getting into talkative mode, “What are you here for? What are you, exactly? Are you real? Can… other people see you?” 

The cat stared at Stell for a very long time and Stell returned the gaze. He wasn’t going to be out-stared by a cat, no, a phantom cat, thank you very much. 

Then Meeyaoweou said something that required no further explanation. 

“I am the mutual love between you and Sejun,” he said. 

Stell blinked as the implication made itself clear to him. “Wait, but I don’t…” 

Meeyaoweou smiled and laid down, and Stell found that he couldn’t complete his sentence.


	16. Lost String Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter ♡
> 
> so far you know three lost strings, can u decipher the other one?

“So are you happy now?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Just… are you happy now?” 

Stell looked across the table at Ken, who was twirling his noodles around in the soup. 

“Happy about what?” 

Ken bent forward and took a long slurp. “Well, about Sejun, of course. Now that the both of you are finally together.” 

“Finally?” 

“I know all about it.” 

Stell smiled a little, oddly. 

“He told me everything. How he fell in love with you just a little after Narra was formed, trainee days… and all those years of wanting to be with you.” 

Stell hesitated a little. He wasn’t sure how much he should say. It had barely been a month since he’d thought that there was a possibility of Ken and Sejun being together.

And although their relationship had now gone down an entirely different path, he wasn’t too sure yet about Ken’s feelings regarding it. 

“You don’t need to say very much, Stell,” said Ken, evidently sensing his thoughts. “Well… it’s good, isn’t it, that we can still sit here opposite each other and have a meal without being awkward?” 

Stell nodded. He knew it was.

“I’ll just say this once and then we’ll be through with it,” Ken said, putting down his sfork and reaching out for his coffee. “Until a while ago I never even thought about Sejun in that way. You wouldn’t, would you? Not Sejun.”

Stell nodded again, keeping his eyes fixed on Ken’s face. 

“But after getting to know him more…” Ken continued, “I began to want to be with him, and at one point I thought that we could actually give it a try. Those were good times… I always had fun with him. Then one night I got really drunk and somehow I said to him, ‘Love me’, and he said ‘I can’t’, and then I got curious, why couldn’t he? So I asked him why, and he told me everything.” 

“Everything?” 

“Yes… even how he’d confessed to you, and all that. I was pretty shocked. I mean, none of us ever suspected! We didn’t even think of it!” 

It would have been difficult, Stell thought, for anyone not in know to have realized that there was anything between him and Sejun. They had been too apart. 

Ken fiddled around with his sfork. “I think that night, I really thought I could love him… I went back home and all I could think about was how lucky you were, Stell. And I thought that since you didn’t seem to want that sort of relationship with him… and since he said he wanted to move on, I thought that maybe I could have a chance with him. But then I realized I didn’t…” 

He stopped talking for a moment and Stell looked away to give him space and time. 

“I realized that he still loved you,” said Ken at last, softly. “And then I remembered what you’d said to me a while ago… that it was true how the saddest thing in the world was loving someone who used to love you. And I thought, I can’t stand in the way of you and Sejun, right? I love you both too much.” 

Stell tried to swallow the constriction in his throat – he was not going to cry in public, ever, no matter how touching Ken’s words were. 

“It was the only way that the three of us could all be happy. And I am happy seeing you with him now, Stell… I know it’s been such a long time and you’ve both gone through so much and I am really happy about it…” and then Ken’s voice broke. 

“You don’t have to say anything else Ken,” Stell said, reaching out to pat his hand awkwardly as Ken looked down at his lap. “It’s okay, I understand, you don’t have to say anything else.” 

“No, it’s fine.” Ken blinked hard for a few minutes, and Stell withdrew his hand and waited. “The thing is…” Ken went on, “I would have given up anything for him. Risked discrimination and peace of mind and… the agency’s wrath. I would have.” 

“But…” 

“But I don’t have to.” Ken raised his eyes to meet Stell’s, steadily. “You have.” 

They looked at each other then Ken smiled a little, and Stell smiled back a little, and they knew that it was all right. 

“What the heck,” said Stell. “We’ll still grow old together. I’ll still see your head balding. And fat Josh next to you making stupid jokes.” 

“And I’ll see you,” said Ken, “still cross-eyed in love with Sejun when you’re seventy years old, and know again and again that I did the right thing. Okay?” 

Stell nodded. “Yes.” 

They smiled again and went back to slurping at their noodles, perfectly at ease with each other, and Stell knew that there were few things in this world that could be better than the friendship that remained, unsullied, between them. 

There were meetings and recording sessions over the next few days and slowly, in their own ways, the members began to accept Stell and Sejun in a different light. 

Sejun tried not to make a spectacle of his growing relationship with Stell by behaving normally and continuing to hang out with Justin during their spare time, but sharp-eyed Josh didn’t miss the many looks that he and Stell exchanged throughout their sessions. 

“Maybe you should just let go and start being with Stell more,” he suggested blithely to Sejun. “It’s okay, you know! Even though it would probably be uncomfortable if you got a little too affectionate.” 

Sejun cuffed him on the head. “That’s the whole point of not being with him, isn’t it!” 

“Ah, well, I know something about the honeymoon period,” Josh declared knowledgeably. “And I’ve known for a long time that you’ve something for Stell, so I’m happy for you too now, you know! I won’t do anything to keep you apart from him!” 

Stell suddenly looked gleeful. “Does that mean I don’t have to do your eye makeup for you anymore?

Josh blinked. “What?” 

“That takes up a lot of time that I could, by your theory, be spending with Sej…” 

“You know what?” Josh suddenly beamed charmingly. “I think things are just fine the way they are now. You’re being considerate by not being too much with Sejun and I wouldn’t want to change that…” 

“Spoiled,” Sejun scoffed, but he knew Stell was going to end up doing Josh’s makeup till the New Beginning, the End of Ends, the Coming of Time. Or possibly even beyond that. 

Justin just smiled and assured Sejun that he thought it was great, especially since “It was really like a drama when Mary said those stuff and then Ken dragged us out of the room! Ah, Sejun, you’re so cool~."

"I hope the both of you will be very happy together, though I’m still finding it very hard to believe that all that took place. Sejun, are you sure? About Stell?” Josh asked. 

“I think so,” said Sejun.

And Josh looked worried. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about you two in that way. Even now I’m not sure I fully understand… if you aren’t sure…” 

Sejun laughed and put an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sure, Josh.” 

Josh was satisfied. 

But nobody actually saw Stell and Sejun together, as a couple, until Justin decided to quench his thirst one day during a long practice session and went around in search of his recent drink craving. He turned a corner and suddenly came upon Stell and Sejun half-hidden behind a pillar. 

Sejun was leaning against the wall and Stell was kissing him slowly, luxuriously, as though they had all the time in the world instead of being in the middle of a grueling ten-hour work day. They seemed so caught up in each other, so completely enraptured, that Justin hurriedly turned and went quietly away. 

It was only a couple of minutes later that Justin discovered there were tears in his eyes. Tears for Sejun’s closed eyes, for the slight smile on Stell’s lips, for the murmur that had passed between them when they parted for breath, for Stell’s hands lying peacefully and yet possessively on Sejun’s hips, for Sejun’s fingers in Stell’s hair. 

Tears.  
Justin was so happy. 

It was a stiflingly hot Thursday afternoon when Stell descended on Sejun's extra class and dragged Sejun out for lunch. But Sejun wasn’t too happy about it. 

“It’s going to rain, I feel it,” he complained to Stell in between bites of omurice. 

“Shut up, it’s as sunny as anything!” Stell said. 

“One thing you must know,” said Sejun aggravatingly, “is that when you’re with a rain man, there’s no such thing as ‘sunny as anything’.” 

“Just eat your omurice, will you!” 

“And you parked your car so far away, too.” 

“You’re about as naggy as my grandmother, if not more. She’s a nice old lady whereas you’re whining away even though I took the time out to come bring you for lunch…” 

“I could have had a perfectly good lunch at school, in the shelter, and waited for the rain to stop before going back home,” Sejun retorted. 

“Sejun, if you want me to remain with you until you’re a potbellied old man, you’re going to have to appreciate it when I bring you out for lunch.” 

Sejun didn’t pull away when Stell inched his leg forward and nudged his knee under the table. 

“Even if the lunch is just omurice or hotdogs?” 

“Count your blessings,” said Stell. 

“I’m counting and they don’t quite add up." Stell scowled but a corner of his mouth quirked, and Sejun gave over teasing him. 

It was enough, he thought, just sitting opposite Stell and teasing him into a smile. It would always be enough. 

When they exited from the restaurant, it was raining. Not a pleasant, pattering downpour, but a white-misted, falling-down-at-150-kmph storm, the kind that just screamed at you to stay indoors until it had wreaked its fury. 

Sejun huddled under the roof entrance of the shop shelter and looked at Stell. “That’s why I said, when you’re with a rain man… why did you park so far away?” 

Stell stood gazing at the rain with his hands in his pockets. “Let’s get to my car.” 

“Seriously?” Sejun said. “And how do you expect to do that? You never bring an umbrella along."

“No, umbrellas are for unglamourous people like you,” Stell returned. 

“Hold up.”

Grumbling under his breath, Sejun reached into his backpack and pulled out his foldable umbrella. “It only covers one person, for your information.” 

“So it will cover half of each of us,” Stell said. 

Thirty seconds after they stepped out from under the shelter, they were half-drenched. Sejun, trying hard to cover them as much as possible with his little one-person umbrella, shook his head. 

“This is such a bad idea!.” 

“Be positive for a couple of seconds. It won’t kill you.” 

They walked on, the rain beating hard at the umbrella, vision restricted to five meters ahead and behind. Sejun kept the umbrella low over their heads. Water splashed over their shoes. 

“Sejun,” said Stell. 

Sejun barely glanced over at him. “Yeah?” 

“You kissed me that time, didn’t you? When you told me that it was over.” 

“Yeah.” 

They walked on, Stell gripping Sejun’s arm with a cold hand. Sejun shivering slightly in the cold, it was cold and wet, and he could feel Stell’s warmth pressed against his side. 

“Stop for a minute,” Stell said. 

They stopped, Sejun turning round inquiringly to face Stell, and Stell looking directly at him. Time seemed to pause for a moment, all breathing drawing to a stop, all movements staggered, and Stell leaned forward and pressed a kiss on Sejun’s lips, soft and quick and gentle, as the rain continued to vent on the umbrella in angry loud splatters. 

Sejun breathed again; time woke up and continued on its steady course. He was shivering and he wasn’t sure if it was solely because of the cold. 

“It’s about time I returned that kiss properly, don’t you think?” Stell said. “That was a kiss of goodbye, this is a kiss of beginnings. We’re even.” 

Sejun looked down at his feet, at the ends of his jeans flopping heavily around his soaked shoes, and then back up at Stell’s smiling face. Stell’s smile that was the brightest and most endearing in this life, the smile that he thought could be something that he lived for.

Day after day,  
every moment of it,  
a shot at happiness. 

“So…” he said. 

“So…” Stell said. 

A gust of wind blew water into their faces. Ryo watched the droplets flow down the sides of Sejun’s face, over his instinctively closed eyelids and over his nose, down into his lips that were parted into a smile. 

The most beautiful sight in the world. 

“You look like a drowned fish,” he said. 

Sejun opened his eyes and cocked an eyebrow. “You give definition to bedraggled,” he replied equally. 

And then, just like that, they were laughing, sounds gobbled up and whisked away by the rain that had once washed away all hope of love and now seemed to be pouring it down on them again.

Two fools laughing under the umbrella in an obliterated landscape. 

“I have dead leaves on my shoes,” said Sejun. 

“And my jeans are soaked through.” Stell reached out and grabbed hold of his hand, pushing it into his pocket. “And I’m holding your hand,” he said. 

“It’s warm,” said Sejun. 

“Let’s get to the car quickly. I want to kiss you properly.” 

“Let’s go home,” Sejun replied. “I want a bath.” 

Stell laughed, his eyes crinkling, and Sejun leaned forward and kissed him, open-mouthed and deep, tongues curling. “There,” he said when they pulled apart. 

Stell breathed in hard to catch his breath. “You know, don’t you?” he said, “That I wasn’t too long behind you. That day that you confessed to me, I started noticing you… and even though I didn’t realize it for the longest time… I was falling in love… falling and falling and falling in love… while you followed me.” 

Sejun put his hand against Stell’s cheek. “I know it now.” 

The umbrella tilted a little. They suddenly didn't hate the rain now.

Stell turned his face towards Sejun’s palm and murmured, his lips forming words against Sejun’s skin. 

"I took you out of that community."

"Mmmm What? Justin told you?!"

"Yeah. Community service. I always wanted to do my bit for society."

"Egoistic jerk!"

"Sejun?" 

"Mmm?"

「"I’ll always love you now."」

"Took you a while."

"Shut up."

Stell kissed Sejun, over and over and over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for reading. I really can't believe that Lost String eventually ended up being angsty for 15 chapters long. It has been an amazing ride, and thank you for being so forgiving of my many inconsistencies and blunders to all of my stories haha. I especially want to thank those who have tried this angst story, encouraged and inspired me to no end with their wonderful comments here and on twt replies and DMs. 
> 
> ALAB you all~ ^(ФωФ)^💛💜
> 
> PS. Did you happen to find out what I asked in the beginning notes here? Uhhmm.. I couldn't contain my feels so I edited this end notes to just to let you all know that Justin is also a part of the community. 😂 in case you'll re-read this multi-chapter

**Author's Note:**

> Heart strings inside the human heart sometimes break after a deep emotional stress - causing the heart to lose form as a result be unable to pump blood effectively.


End file.
